


The Rebel's Last Stand

by how_do_i_turn_this_thing_off



Series: The Rebel's Last Stand [1]
Category: Star Wars Episode VIII: The Last Jedi, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-13
Updated: 2020-08-24
Packaged: 2020-12-09 10:14:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 56
Words: 143,967
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20993135
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/how_do_i_turn_this_thing_off/pseuds/how_do_i_turn_this_thing_off
Summary: From this fic prompt on tumblr:spacecinderella: Oh my gOD you know what I want?? I want Rey to be on the brink of death and I want Ben to run to her and kneel over her, crying and begging her not to die.





	1. The light side of the Force

The Rebels had chosen their base well this time, a complex series of tunnel networks under the surface of a rainforest planet, thick with vegetation and rich with edible plants and clean water. They could survive a long siege in these conditions, and it had been a long siege, but now the First Order had finally broken through and they were cornered in the hub of the tunnel network, hemmed in on all sides. There was only so much longer they could last. These last few days it had been just a waiting game.

“Supreme Leader, we’ve got them,” Hux said, reporting to Ren with obvious pride, wearing his nearest expression to happiness. “The scans of all the surrounding areas are complete. There is no way out.”

“Don’t let your guard down, General,” Ren cautioned. “She’s still in there.”

“Even if she is, sir, she won’t stand much of a chance against all of us by herself.”

“Maybe,” Ren replied, watching the nearest, largest hub entrance, where the fighting had been fierce. Rey was the last real opposition the Rebels had left in their arsenal, and even without a lightsaber she’d made her presence felt. Strategic tunnel collapses; ambushes that dissipated the moment stormtroopers tried to respond; Force throws and blocks that could bottleneck a whole area for hours; yes, her blunt strong-arming was the greater portion of why this had taken so long. But she was trapped in there now with the rest of them, Ren could feel it. He’d honed in on her so closely, so precisely, he could practically tell which blaster shots were hers.

His anticipation of cornering her at last was so sharp and urgent it almost made him feel a little out of his mind. She was so close, and he’d nearly caught sight of her once or twice today, but not close enough. He wanted to look her in the eye again, in the flesh, not just in the Force. He wanted to breathe the same air she did, to share her reality, to see her in his. What he would do when that moment came, he wasn’t sure. He could only hope that in these last few intervening hours something brilliant would come to him.

Another salvo of blaster shots echoed from inside the hub, making them all duck for cover. Ren reached out, feeling his way through the shooters. She wasn’t there. 

“Taking fire from the south,” a studied, dispassionate voice said on the radio. “Should we advance?”

“Press forward at the nearest opportunity, Captain,” Hux replied. Ren reached that way and found her almost instantly, burning in his Force sight as no one else could. Of course she was there; he was on the north side of the hub so she would be on the south.

“I’m going to join the southern advance,” he told Hux.

“Supreme Leader, we have greater reinforcements here,” Hux protested at once. “The southern side has more constricted tunnels, it will be far harder to provide backup.”

“I don’t need backup,” Ren said shortly, turning and making his way down the line with the Praetorians trailing him. He was about to see her. He was moments away. The promise of it burned within him, and he felt his saber hand sweating in its glove. It would be a battle like it had been on the Starkiller, only this time he would win. But the fight itself was what he wanted, the push and pull as the Force enveloped them both during their contest, so strongly that even non-sensitives could almost feel it. There was something between them he couldn’t name when they fought, either with or beside each other, something raw and powerful and terribly real in a way he didn’t know how to describe. He craved it like an addict.

A shower of blaster fire distracted him and he stopped, reaching out in the Force, bringing a handful of heavy rocks down on the offending Rebels. An explosion just in front of him pushed him back for a moment, the heat and the power expanding across his field of vision, but he deflected it away, not bothering to expend the energy it would take to catch the blast or contain it. His greatest contest was before him, he didn’t want to waste even a single breath more on these minor impediments.

They barely made it another ten feet before more blasters fired on them, from a different part of the hub. He reached for it impatiently and at the same time felt a blast hit him in the side, just under his arm. It dropped him to his knees, more out of surprise than pain; how had he not sensed it coming? But then he felt across the fabric of his shirt and realized it wasn’t breached at the exact same time that he understood the wounding impact he’d felt hadn’t been his own.

Rey.

The inside of him screamed apart into pieces and he was only just behind it. “STOP FIRING,” he shouted, flinging out a hand at every stormtrooper he could reach in his immediate area, breaking their blasters apart with a thought. “Tell Hux I want every First Order soldier to stand down!” he snapped at the nearest Praetorian.

“But Supreme Leader, General Hux reports a successful advance in the south.”

“I’m going in there and every soldier that fires or tries to advance I will kill myself,” Ren growled, looking the offending Praetorian directly in the eyes as he hit the button on his lightsaber, firing the crackling red blade. He didn’t remember ever drawing it to his hand but it was there just the same, solid and reassuring, the heat and the glow seeming to drag parts of him back into place somehow, holding him together.

He strode toward the hub, leaving his guards behind with a wave of his hand as his saber flashed, deflecting the blaster bolts that instantly showered him from every angle. He barely even knew what he was doing, his strokes rising and falling faster than they ever had in his life and it still wasn’t fast enough. The Force was cascading through him at searing speed, a continuous flood he didn’t direct so much as released. It seemed to clear the way almost of its own accord, and a moment later Ren had entered the tunnels.

It was unbearable to have to spare even that amount of attention when he was bending every available ounce of his might on finding Rey. She was in front of him somewhere, that was all he knew, so that was where he went, blindly feeling his way forward, every bend in the tunnels introducing him to another fork in the route or another shower of blaster fire. It took too much time, too much time, and Rey felt strange in the Force, her energy soured somehow in a way that panicked him.

Around the next corner he heard a familiar voice, someone he had heard most recently in the background of the bond, now here and giving orders to what sounded like several people. He sheathed his lightsaber blade reluctantly, though every instinct was demanding aggressive physical action so he could fight his way through. He had to get to her and fighting, however fast or strong or good at it he was, was taking too much time.

“Poe,” he shouted before rounding the corner. “Poe Dameron.”

There was a short, surprised pause then he heard, “Yeah? What do you want, Ren?”

“Rey’s been hit,” Ren said, the words acid in his throat, on his tongue, the panic rising inside him until he almost wondered how much longer it would be before he couldn’t fight it back down.

“By one of your guys,” Poe shouted back. So he knew. That meant he would know where she was.

“I’m coming around the corner,” Ren said, moving forward, hands up.

“I’d rather you stayed right where you are,” Poe replied. Around the next bend he found himself facing a choke point held by Poe and six other Rebels, armed to the teeth, blaster barrels staring him down.

“I can’t do that,” Ren said, moving forward slowly but moving forward.

“Go back where you came from, Supreme Leader,” Poe ordered contemptuously, but he didn’t fire. “We’ll take care of Rey.”

“I can help her,” Ren promised, his voice not as loud as he’d meant it to be, hoarse with his fear.

“How?” Poe demanded.

“We’re strong in the Force. Even more when we’re together. You’re General now?”

“Yeah, I’m General now.”

“Then, General, I’m not asking you, I’m telling you. Rey is injured and you’ve got no way out but while I’m in here the First Order won’t fire on you. You take me to her, you’re safe, for a while. You try to stop me, I’ll kill all of you and get to her anyway. And– and maybe not in time,” he said, his voice nearly cracking on the words as it hadn’t since he was an adolescent.

“I don’t believe you,” Poe said, but in the Force Ren heard the lie.

“The shooting’s stopped,” Ren pointed out. “Can you believe that?”

Poe hesitated and Ren came to a halt where he was, less than ten feet shy of their line, feeling the itch of sweat trickling down his back as he held himself in place by sheer will alone. Finally the General broke ranks, stepping forward and looking Ren up and down. “Alright,” he grudgingly agreed. “But if you try anything–.”

“You won’t be able to stop me no matter what you do,” Ren said, lowering his hands. “But I need to get to her. I need to get to her RIGHT NOW.” Poe almost physically started back but Ren didn’t care anymore, whatever emotion was on his face, however much naked need was in his words. If raw sentiment got him through he would beg, if needs be. Rey was in there and she needed him immediately, IMMEDIATELY.

“Fine,” Poe decided, turning back towards the line. “Follow me. You lot stand down,” he ordered the Rebels, who didn’t look at all pleased to hear it. “We’ve got a truce, for now.”

Ren followed, ignoring his bravado. Poe moved at a fast clip but it wasn’t fast enough, not nearly enough. As they went more Rebels tried to stop them, convinced Ren was somehow manipulating or puppeting Poe, and every time he had to order them to stand down was another second they were delayed. Ren pushed his senses as hard as he could, and Rey came closer a little at a time.

The very center of the hub was hollowed out, a large cave where Rebels rushed them from every side, reporting in from the tunnels all around, approaching with their blasters leveled at Ren and not all of them putting them down completely even when Poe told them to. Ren shoved his way through, using the Force to buffer his path, finally seeing his way clear. Rey’s energy shone from an adjacent cave, just around the corner, and he got there in record time, not stopping until he stood in the entrance. There he froze as if he’d hit a wall.

The cave was darkened but he saw her in a moment, lying on her side, facing away from him. There were medical personnel hovering, trying to take care of her, but they didn’t seem to be doing anything and even from the entrance he could see the fresh wound on her side, the charred edges of her shirt, the burned and blackened flesh. It almost took him to his knees again.

“What the hell are you doing here?!” someone shouted, and a Rebel appeared from another part of the room, leveling a blaster. Ren was too dazed to react but Poe was there in a moment, nearly tackling him.

“Finn!” the General shouted. “Stand down!”

“Get him away from her!” Finn shouted back, lowering his blaster but not by much.

“He can help Rey!” Poe insisted, grabbing him by the front of his jacket and physically shaking him. “Listen to me, he can help Rey.” That seemed to get through to Finn and Poe looked back at Ren, distrust clear in his eyes, overridden only by the fear for her that they seemed to share. “The docs can’t get to her,” he said. “Every time they try there’s some kind of energy around her, some kind of barrier. We think she’s doing it somehow, while she’s unconscious. Like a protective instinct.”

Ren opened his mouth automatically to tell him that was impossible but reconsidered in the same breath. He could feel the Force roiling off her, tainted, overwhelmed with pain and with fear. The wound was deep; even unconscious, Rey knew it. The energy in the room pulsed with the same panic he was feeling, reflected back at him and nearly making his hair stand on end.

“Rey,” he said instead, turning towards her, pulling off his gloves. He pushed his voice at her with the Force and at a word from Poe the doctors withdrew, leaving his path clear. He tried to speak again but his throat was choked with tears and pain and anyway, no words would do. Instead he entered the room, approaching until he was a few feet away from her. He could see what Poe meant; she was sparking in the Force like her skin itself was conducting live electricity. One touch could set her off, and burn that hand at the very least. He stretched out both of his over her, closing his eyes, focusing.

He pushed, from his center outwards, joining his Force to hers. Immediately her fear swept through him. On top of his own it almost forced him back. He bit down grimly on the impulse, bending the power to his will. The dangerous energy around her seemed to clear, bit by bit, until he had managed to push it away so much that she was almost completely exposed. “Treat her,” he snapped, straining to say even that and still hold the ground he’d gained, and the doctors rushed forward immediately. When they found they could safely touch her wound they grabbed their supplies, spraying disinfectants and pain relievers. A little of Rey’s fear eased, but not enough, and the doctors had no skill that would allow them to recover the tissue that had been burned away.

Ren pushed himself even farther, sweat and tears on his face, his jaw locked so hard his back teeth throbbed and ached, reaching into her. The source of her pain seemed far from him, as though it was at the end of a long corridor and a howling wind blew against him, holding him back whenever he tried to move forward. He pushed against it anyway but as he did her energy rose in response to his inattentiveness, threatening to deny the doctors their hard-won access, and he had to abandon the effort and focus on keeping it at bay.

He wasn’t strong enough. Years of training, years of battle and sweat, discipline and self-denial, constantly forcing himself to be better, and he wasn’t nearly good enough for this. If Luke were here-- it was an intrusive thought and he tried to push it away but couldn’t.

One of the doctors’ hands strayed too far down Rey’s back, brushing the lurking energy field, and she pulled it back sharply with a surprised gasp. Ren was holding his place but somehow still losing ground, as if the power he fought continued to swell and build while his stayed insufficient and small.

“Sir, please,” the bravest of the doctors said, and even with his eyes closed Ren’s senses were so expanded right now that he could almost see her looking up at him. “We need you to hold it off. She has to be stabilized, we need more time.”

“I know,” he growled. His muscles shook, locked and trembling, his shoulders ached with the effort. How long had he been here like this? Twenty seconds? Two hours?

“Can you clear the way to her chest?”

“No.”

“If we can get to her chest…” the doctor said, standing and edging as close to Ren as she dared, “we might be able to treat her enough that at least she wouldn’t be feeling any pain. The way it is now–.”

“I know how it is now,” Ren gasped, his own heart pulling apart at the seams. They thought he couldn’t tell she was still in pain? That he couldn’t feel it in his own body, on a cellular level, in his own soul?

“He’s doing everything he can,” Poe said, and Ren sensed him gently pulling the doctor away. “Just help her as much as possible, we don’t know how long we have.”

“It’s not enough,” the doctor protested. “We need more supplies, equipment–.”

“Hey, this is what we’ve got, okay?” Poe said, his tone low, commanding. “You don’t have to tell me it’s not good enough, I know it’s not good enough, but it has to be good enough for now. At least it will buy us time.”

They thought he was going to fail her. Ren couldn’t blame them; he was beginning to think so too. It made no sense. This should be the part of the Force he could control, this grand and huge and terrible fear should be exactly what he was best able to wield, to bend. Hadn’t he done that for all his own fears? Hadn’t he taken every terrible thing and made it his power, made it his strength? But now of all times it wasn’t enough. He reached into Rey again, seeking her wound, and was beaten back even more easily than last time. He tried to breathe, tried to center himself, but under the weight of their combined, spiraling pain and panic there was no center to be found. Even if he did, how did he imagine he could heal her? The Dark Side was not concerned with healing and saving.

It took everything he had left, every scrap of will, but he tore whatever focus he could spare away from the Force standoff and did something he hadn’t done in many years. He reached for the Light.

At first nothing happened and his stomach dropped. Had he really managed to shut himself off from it for good? Before he would have been elated but now Rey was lying in front of him, desperately needing him, and he needed it to save her. So instead he reached for it through Rey, using her own strong, unshakable connection to the Light Side, pushing through their bond to feel it and remind himself how it felt, how it was done. And slowly, dimly at first, the Light rose to meet him.

Then faster. Then faster. It fell into place within him and the fear, the fear that he could control but not combat, seemed to flinch. Ren reached even more urgently and the Light responded to his need, burning a clear path in front of him. He gathered it carefully and reached into Rey.

“What is this?” Poe said from far away, and Ren was dimly aware there were cries of shock, the doctors beating a hasty retreat. What this looked like from outside himself, to non-Force users, he had no idea, but a thought was growing within him that they didn’t need the doctors anymore. He reached Rey’s wound, the center of all the darkness swirling in her, took her pain as though it was a physical thing in his hands, and broke it in two. The energy around her snapped and fell away and the huge weight of fear that had been on him like an entire planet bearing down on his shoulders lifted off, so quickly he stumbled and nearly fell.

“Whoa!” Poe said in his ear, and he felt the General’s arms around him, catching him. “Steady as she goes. I think you’re doing it.”

“Yes,” Ren said distantly, easing him away, afraid to lose focus. He was certainly doing something, though he couldn’t say what. He knelt next to Rey, hands still outstretched, eyes still closed, and examined her wound from within. It was terrible, stripping the flesh almost clean away from three of her ribs, and he explored the edges of what had been, sinking into the muscles. There was a strange and alien sense of consciousness to them, as though they resented their half-ness, wanting to re-make the shape they had had before. They lacked only the power; so did he, but now he knew the trick and joined his Force to Rey’s, filling the edges with as much Light as he could possibly reach.

“Tell your doctors to take care of their other patients,” he told Poe, his voice far away even to himself. “I’ll heal Rey.”

“Okay,” Poe agreed instantly, only hesitating one long moment before moving off.

The tissues formed. Ren could feel it, and wondered at it, and with every centimeter they recovered the fear eased a little more. Rey’s own consciousness was there, just under the surface, but Ren gently suppressed it. She wasn’t trying to come back, not yet, but for now he needed her to stay as she was so he could manipulate their combined power without interference. The Force was creating everything needed- not just tissue, but blood, skin- and Ren observed with a kind of distant wonder, still holding off the pain, using the Dark Side and the Light Side both at once. It was strange to feel but he pushed that back too, focusing only on Rey. Slowly, ever so slowly, the muscles of the wound stretched, and moved, and closed. When the tissue had been recovered the blood filled it. By the time he was helping the skin push itself across the open space he’d gotten much better at where and how to direct their power. It wasn’t so much him constantly healing her as letting her body regain the shape it remembered, recover what it was already working to achieve.

Finally, finally, the skin settled into place. Rey’s fear, her pain, the last vestiges of the all-consuming panic that had pinned her down trembled and flexed for a brief moment, like a last spasm, before winking out of existence. Ren’s own muscles spasmed and trembled as he finally lowered his hands to her shoulders, rolling her towards him as he opened his eyes, letting his natural sight take over in place of his Force sight. They stung and smarted from being screwed tightly shut for so long, a couple last tears falling as he took her in. Her side was visible through the singed gap in her shirt, whole and undamaged, the skin a little pink and tender-looking but completely healed. His own panic subsided gently, like receding waves on the seashore, and then was gone, and with it Ren let go of the Force, both sides, feeling himself slump for a moment like a puppet with its strings cut.

“Rey,” he croaked, his throat agony, the word fire and fear and hope. She didn’t wake, didn’t even twitch, her breathing soft and even but her eyes staying closed. “You have to come back,” he told her, pulling her towards him, off the bed, into his arms. He wanted to do it gently but didn’t have the strength left for that, only for the need, this horrible and terrible and fragile need to have her as close to him as he could, and he dragged her to him and held her against his chest, his breathing ragged. He was still crying somehow. It was amazing how many tears he’d had in him; he’d never realized.

She didn’t wake up. The fear and the panic were coming back inside him and he was too tired to resist them. “You have to come back,” he repeated into her hair, his lips against her forehead, her skin, the warmth and solidness of her. “Rey, please. I’m right here. Please, please.”

“How is she?” Poe’s voice said above him, a gentle, if wary, hand on his shoulder.

“I don’t know,” Ren admitted, the words dragging something terrible and vulnerable out of him.

“You healed her?”

“Yes. But she won’t wake up.”

“Maybe it’s some kind of side-effect or something. That all looked pretty extreme, from what I could tell. Maybe she needs the rest.”

Maybe. Maybe. Ren nodded, not bothering to try and voice the other option. Surely he’d done enough. In the Light Force, in the Dark Force, somewhere in that battle, he couldn’t have lost her. He would have felt it. He would have known.

“Rey,” he said, pulling on his power again, or hers, or some mix in between, the tiny amount he could summon now and put into his words, pushing them towards her. “You can’t leave me here. You can’t. I just got here. I haven’t even killed all your friends yet. Aren’t you going to yell at me? Aren’t you going to wake up and try to convince me to turn?” He leaned back, brushing her hair away from her face. She was still breathing. She was breathing but he couldn’t tell if she was really here with him or not, and maybe it was his own weakness and exhaustion, but maybe it was something else.

“You can’t die,” he told her sternly. “You can’t die, I won’t allow it. You’re the one thing that’s not allowed to go, do you hear me? All the rest, all the rest, I don’t care about it. It doesn’t matter. But you’re not allowed to go. Please,” he added, burying his face in her shoulder, in the soft curve of her neck, hugging her to him as though through the proximity alone he could push his own life into her. “Please. You have to stay with me.”

It was dark. It was all dark, here in the cave, in his mind, in the tiny amount of her he could feel. There was nothing else but darkness and he didn’t want it, he hated it, he would have killed the darkness itself if he could.

Then, a ripple. A tiny susurration, like a drop falling from far above, disturbing the darkness. A sense of something, in his heart, in his arms. Reaching for it sapped the last of Ren’s strength and he felt Poe’s arms around him again as his own failed him, as he nearly dropped her, as he fell back and the darkness came to claim him. The last thing he saw before his eyes closed were Rey’s eyes opening.


	2. After barely managing to save Rey from a mortal wound she received in battle Ren is taken prisoner by the Resistance

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rey visits Ben's cell to confront him about exactly what happened when he braved going behind Rebel lines to save her after she was mortally wounded during a First Order attack.

Rey returned to the cell Ben was being kept in, sweaty and dirty and exhausted. There’d been no time to rest or recover after she’d finally regained consciousness; the First Order waited for the Resistance, surrounding them in this endless network of tunnels, and Rey was a crucial element in the oncoming evacuation. She didn’t feel bad after her narrow escape from the jaws of death, necessarily- no pain, and not even a scratch where they told her her gaping wound had been- just a little woozy, and oddly short of breath. On that minor basis it was hard to justify asking for a break when so many lives depended on her.

Ben lay on his back, hands bound in front of him, on the floor of a dirt cell with rusted bars across the entrance, asleep or unconscious, it was hard to say. Rey crouched against the wall facing the bars, studying him. They told her he’d come to her after she’d been hit, that they hadn’t even been able to touch her before he arrived. They told her he’d cleared the way for the doctors to do their work, but that nothing the doctors did could have saved her.

They told her… well, they told her a lot of things. Rey brushed her hand over her side absentmindedly, something she’d done so many times in the last hour alone that a smear of dirt in the shape of her fingers left tracks across that side of her clothes. What Ben had done, or what they’d said he did… even Finn swore he’d saved her life. Poe had sworn the same and they’d looked at her differently, and at Ben differently, as if they’d seen something awesome in the literal sense of the word. And impossible. And even a little terrifying.

Ben groaned, his eyes opening, staring at the ceiling for a moment. His arms twitched and he looked down, realized his hands were bound, then looked towards her. “Rey,” he said, his voice hoarse and low.

“Ben,” she responded, smiling as much as she could, considering.

“I don’t know who is more insulted by this,” he said, sitting up with obvious effort, looking around him. “Me, for seeming so weak the Resistance actually thought I could be kept in here, or Poe’s intelligence, for actually thinking I could be kept in here.”

“It makes them feel better.”

“They can keep their fairytales,” he grumbled, finding the canteen that had been left for him. He drank deeply, as well as he could manage with his hands together, then set it aside and stood. “How are you?”

She stood with him, feeling uncomfortable as she never had in his presence before. Almost… awkward. “I’m good,” she said. “Better, I mean. You know. Good.”

“Your injury?” he asked, stepping closer. She felt the light brush of his energy in the Force against her side, seeking, and automatically flinched away from it.

“It’s good,” she repeated, trying to cover the reaction by reaching up and rubbing her hand over it again. “Gone. Completely gone. They said you did it.”

“Rey,” he said, standing right against the bars now, his bound hands and jailed state doing absolutely nothing to make him less intimidating. “Rey, come here.”

“I can’t,” she said, not moving, though she did offer him another weak smile. “What if you try to take me hostage so you can escape?”

“Rey,” he repeated, his voice low, his eyes on her in a way that made her feel hot and cold at once. “You almost died.”

“Yes, well–.”

“I thought you had died,” he said, pressing his forehead against one of the bars, closing his eyes. “For a moment I couldn’t tell.”

“Ben, I’m fine,” she protested, taking a step towards him in spite of herself. “You saved me.”

“I didn’t think I could.”

“But you did.”

“Rey,” he breathed, like it was promise, a hymn, a child’s cry. “Come here. Please.” She took the last step toward him, stopping just an inch shy of the bars. Eyes still closed he pushed his hands through, toward her side, resting just the barest weight of his knuckles where the dirt smear was, and she felt that gentle, hesitant energy again, giving her a moment to react then sinking into her when she didn’t.

“I told you, I’m fine,” she said when she saw his shoulders sag with relief, when he withdrew his hands almost unwillingly.

“I wasn’t sure,” he said, leaning back and opening his eyes to look at her. “I thought there might be something I missed, inside of you. I’ve never done that before.”

“What did you do?” she asked, a little more urgently than she’d meant to.

“To be honest, I'm not sure,” he said. “I fed Force energy to your body. Helped it regain it’s shape. It felt– strange. Not bad, but strange.”

“You can do that? With the Dark side?”

“No. I used your power too.”

“You used the Light side?” He didn’t respond, just looked away, and she felt something terribly like hope suddenly press down on her chest as if it was trying to squeeze the air from her lungs. “You did. You used the Light side, to heal me.”

“Your Light side. Not mine. I couldn’t even feel it without using yours.”

“But you did feel it, once you used mine. You did, I can tell you did.”

“That’s not why I did it!” he snapped, his voice still low but his eyes blazing at her with rage, with frustration. “I don’t care about the Light, I don’t even care about the Dark, I care about you.” He closed his eyes, shaking his head once. “Come into the cell.”

“What?” she asked, starting back from him.

“Come into the cell. I need to feel like you’re here. This,” he said, gesturing with his bound hands between them, “this feels too much like the bond. I won’t use it to escape,” he added, all but rolling his eyes at her as he saw her hesitation. “You know I don’t need to.”

“You better not,” she warned, edging toward the door.

“Get in the cell,” he repeated, taking a step back so he was as far from the door as he could be in the cramped space. She unlocked the door with the Force- an old analog lock, it barely took even a conscious thought- and swung it open, creaking and groaning horrifically, only wide enough for her to get through before closing it again and locking them both in. They stepped towards each other at the same time and she took his hands in hers.

“I don’t remember it,” she said, staring at his hands instead of his face. “I got bits and pieces of what happened but not enough. They’re not strong in the Force, so they don’t really know exactly how it went.”

“It’s probably better that way.”

“I think they’re afraid of you,” she said, glancing up at him. He raised his eyebrows expressively. “Well, more,” she corrected herself. “More than they were. Or in a different way. Even the doctors didn’t want to go near you when you collapsed, Poe had to make them treat you.”

“Then he’s a fool. I’m his enemy, he should have let me die.”

“Only you think like that.” She tugged at his wrists and he let her raise his hands, not realizing what she intended until she ducked under them into the circle of his arms. “Poe wouldn’t let you die,” she said, resting her hands on his arms. “Not after what you did for me. Even if he doesn’t know all of it.”

“But you want to,” he said, watching her, noting the exact moment she flinched the tiniest bit. “Yes, that’s what this is about. You’re curious what I did to save you.”

“I’ve never heard of Force use like this before. Or strength like this.”

“We are strong, both of us. Stronger than anyone. But there were Force users who could do it once, in the early days of the Order.” He hesitated, and she felt more than saw his breath hitch as he glanced down at her lips then back up again. “I could show you, if you wanted. I think I could, anyway. I should have recovered enough for that.”

“Show me?”

“What I did. From the inside. Some of it. You don’t want to feel the whole thing, it would terrorize you.”

“I do,” she protested. “I do want to feel it.”

He considered her a long moment, his arms solid around her, his torso warm even though there was still that last inch between them. “Close you eyes,” he finally said. “Let me into your mind.”

“Will it hurt?” she asked, closing her eyes anyway.

“No. Not if you want me there.”

“I want you there.”

“Breathe,” he ordered, and she felt that gentle press in the Force again, this time against her temples. “It’s not going to be pleasant. If you want me to stop–.”

“Then I’ll stop you.”

“Yes,” he said after a moment of surprised silence, sounding pleased. “Yes, I guess you will.” The feeling of his energy in her temples, inside her head, seemed to expand, swallowing her as though she’d been submerged.

The Force. It was all around her, a tidal wave of energy. Pain. Panic. Fear, overwhelming, choking fear, crushing her until she had to gasp to breathe. She was him but she was outside of him as well, watching from two dimensions. What she saw in front of her she saw as though she were standing off to one side, but what she felt she felt as though Ben’s hands were hers, Ben’s will was hers, Ben’s feelings, a roar inside her and all around her until she couldn’t tell what was Ben and what was her and what was the Force inside them both.

She saw her wound. She almost threw up. She hadn’t just been hit with a blaster shot, like she’d thought, this was more like lasercanon fire. She could smell herself, smell her own skin and muscles burned, charred, and she wanted to throw up but couldn’t in that moment because she wasn’t really her in that moment, because she was more Ben than anything and Ben hadn’t thrown up. He stood his ground, eyes closed, almost pulsing, shimmering with energy, his hands stretched out over her, sweat and tears dripping from his face in equal measure.

She wanted to do something for him, she wanted to help him, but this was an old battle and her sympathy was swept away on the tide of his memories. Doctors rushed forward to treat her but they had no real help to give. He eventually sent them away, and at the same time she saw and felt him decide, the specific moment he reached- and reached- then went into her and reached again.

The Light came to him. Her Light, drawing his to the surface when he couldn’t find it on his own. And slowly, with every ounce of energy and will he had, he pushed it back into her. Her muscles seemed to expand, regrouping as they stretched across what had been empty space. The wound was pieced back together, blood and sinew, skin and bone, remaking her body until it was whole again. He didn’t relax, didn’t slow down, didn’t let go of one single ounce of his determination, his absolute focus, until she was completely healed.

It fell away from her, collapsing brick for brick like an ancient edifice coming undone, the illusion breaking apart so that reality shone through. Rey gripped Ben’s arms tightly, leaning into him, trying to regain her footing as he slipped out of her mind and was gone.

“Rey?” Ben asked, warm and solid under her touch. She shook her head against his chest, trying to breathe. The urge to vomit came again but she fought it back down. “I’m sorry,” he said. “That was too much for you. I should have realized– they’ve been working you like a dog, haven’t they?”

“Ben,” she said, holding onto him. Just that, just that one word. The false memories in her head may have gone but the feeling of them, the absolute terror, the phenomenal, raw strength of him, pulling her back together and ripping through his own pain and indecision and prejudice to do it like they were nothing, it was still there, playing over and over on a loop.

“I know,” he said, even though he didn’t, she was sure that he didn’t. “Do you need to sit down? Drink something?”

“No,” she said into his chest, leaning even closer into him, if that was possible. She didn’t want to do anything that drew them apart by even a centimeter.

“Okay. Okay, we’ll just stay like this, then.”

She nodded again and went back to focusing on her breathing. There was a strange trembling sensation in her muscles, an exhaustion as mental as it was physical, and she closed her eyes, listened to his heartbeat, trying not to think. Feeling instead. Trusting. Like waking up from something that was half dream and half nightmare, and more terrible and heartbreaking than both.

Something occurred to her then, something she should have spotted right away, and she leaned back to look at him. “You cut it off too soon,” she told him.

“Did I?” he asked, not quite meeting her eyes.

“You did.” She was sure of it now, reading the truth in his hesitation. “What happened next?”

“Nothing. I thought you were dead but you woke up. Then I passed out.”

“What else?”

“Nothing else, Rey.”

“Then show me,” she said decisively, squaring up to him as much as she could in this position. “Show me the rest.”

“No. You’re too tired for that. I’M too tired for that.”

“Either tell me or show me, Ben, which is it?”

“Nothing else happened,” he repeated, looking away from her. “I was just afraid, that’s all. That I hadn’t done enough. That I’d lost you, somewhere in the middle.”

“And?”

“And I said so,” he said. “Or something like it.” His eyes found her again, almost as deep and expressive as the memories themselves had been, and she felt the same sensation of being pulled under but in a very different way. “I asked you to stay with me.”

“You did?”

“I was very insistent,” he murmured, his head dipping down toward hers, so close their foreheads almost touched.

“Show me, Ben. Just a little. Show me, please.” He sighed, and she felt the fight go out of him.

“Fine,” he murmured, and in a moment his energy reclaimed her and she fell back into it. This time there was only the outside perspective, standing above him as he knelt on the ground with her in his arms, Poe hovering over them both like a protective parent. Oddly it was Ben he was looking at, not her.

“Rey,” Ben said, and she felt the push of his power, like a shadow, or a ghost, reaching for her. She felt it, not just in the memory, but in her waking body, a faint but real memory of her own. “You can’t leave me here,” he told her. “You can’t. I just got here. I haven’t even killed all your friends yet. Aren’t you going to yell at me? Aren’t you going to wake up and try to convince me to turn?” In real life she smiled, leaning into him. It wasn’t as total this time, wasn’t as all-consuming. She could still feel the real Ben under her hands, his chest against hers, his breath on her face.

“You can’t die,” memory-Ben told the memory-Rey, his firm tone at odds with the tears on his face. “You can’t die, I won’t allow it. You’re the one thing that’s not allowed to go, do you hear me? All the rest, all the rest, I don’t care about it. It doesn’t matter. But you’re not allowed to go. Please,” he added, hiding his face in her shoulder, hugging her to him like she was being engulfed by a shadow made into a man, given pain, given a heart. “Please. You have to stay with me.”

His lips on hers. She felt it, the tiniest sensation of his breath on her mouth, then his lips were on hers, solid, warm, in the real world. It was real. It was now.

She kissed him back, pressing her lips against his, feeling his arms, his chest, his real-ness as the memory of him begging her to stay fell away and the living Ben replaced it, tilting his head to get more of her, the Force connecting them and flushing them both with their need, like heat in her blood itself, bending her to its will. Or maybe his was the will she was bending to. She hardly cared, his will was so much like her own in this moment, and their kiss was an eternity in itself.

He tasted good. Like sweat, like wanting, like the heat of the sun on her in the desert and the distant coolness of the stars. It was her first time tasting him but there was something so obvious, so Ben about the lips on hers as she surrendered to them, like of course this was him. She was sure, suddenly, that she could have recognized it even before now, in any galaxy, any star system, from a hundred thousand lightyears away she would have known.

Rey couldn’t get close enough, pressing into him with absolute abandon, forgetting everything else. He was gentle but she couldn’t stand just that and pushed more of her passion at him, in her lips, in the Force, demanding an equal response. He smiled against her and gave in and somewhere far away she heard the snap of the ropes that had bound his hands together then felt his arms close in around her, crushing her breath into his mouth, that heat in their bond flaring and flaming like it was going to burn down the world.

“Am I interrupting something?” Ben broke away from her, looking up towards the voice, and Rey all but groaned her frustration, turning as well and glaring at Poe. “Bad time?” he asked sarcastically, looking directly at her. “Much as I hate to get in the way of your touching reunion scene the First Order has ramped up their attacks, we have to go.”

Ben sighed, almost a growl in his voice as he said, “I told them not to.”

“Yeah, well, Hux apparently decided you’ve been away long enough. And in all fairness we did take their Supreme Leader prisoner.”

“'Prisoner’,” Ben scoffed as he gently moved Rey off of him, shaking the last of the ropes from his wrists.

“Well, it was a nice thought, anyway,” Poe said, watching. “You’re leaving now, right? Not going on a murderous rampage, anything like that?”

“I’m leaving now,” Ben confirmed, ignoring the rest.

“What?” Rey protested, reaching for him. He sidestepped her so that her hand fell short. “You can’t. You can’t, Ben.”

“Or what?” he asked. “I let them shoot you all to pieces?”

“Stay. Stay and fight with us.”

“I don’t think so,” he said, brushing past her, breaking the lock open with a twist of his hand. Poe shook his head but didn’t comment, stepping back as the door swung free.

“Ben, stop!” Rey snapped, pushing her own will in the Force past his, slamming the door shut again. “Look at me! Look at me if you’re going to say it.”

“Say what?” he demanded, turning towards her.

“That you’re leaving me. That you’re leaving me, even though I stayed.”

His face froze in shock, shock that quickly gave way to a clear, dark anger. “This isn’t _death_, Rey,” he told her. “The First Order isn’t death, the Dark side isn’t death! Stop pretending you’re still a child, it’s not all black and white.”

“And you?” she demanded. “Are you all black and white?”

“I never was! That was you, seeing something in me that wasn’t there.”

“That’s not all that wasn’t there,” she said then, very clearly, very deliberately, reached up and wiped the back of her hand across her mouth.

“Oh, shit,” Poe muttered in the sudden silence that followed. Ben went utterly cold, in his expression, in the Force, dousing their connection with a blast of iciness like the vacuum of space itself. He snapped out his arm and in one decisive, condemning blow crushed the door and bars of the cell sideways like he was opening a curtain, leaving them smashed against each other in the corner.

She regretted it instantly as he turned away- she’d regretted it the moment she’d done it- but Rey didn’t know what else to do but stand her ground as he faced Poe.

“I want my lightsaber. Now.”

“Yeah. Yeah, it’s right here,” Poe said hurriedly, reaching behind his back and grabbing the lightsaber out, handing it to him. “We’ve still got a deal, right? No murdering on your way out?” Ben ignored him again, taking the saber and leaving without a word, without even a twitch back in Rey’s direction.

“Sorry,” Rey said to Poe, reluctantly stepping forward to watch as his shadow disappeared around the corner. “If he does hurt anyone it’s probably my fault.”

“I don’t think he will,” Poe said, frowning thoughtfully. “He’s a strange guy, Ben Solo. Nearly cut his way through every defense we had trying to get to you.”

“I bet,” Rey murmured, avoiding eye contact as Poe looked toward her.

“Look,” he continued in a quieter, gentler tone, “I don’t know anything about you guys, alright? And this is obviously way off the radar in terms of normal relationships. But you didn’t see what I saw when he came for you. He would have done anything, and I mean anything. For a minute there I honestly thought he was going to die.”

“Yeah,” Rey mumbled, remembering that moment, Poe hovering over them like he was worried about Ben, not her.

“And I don’t know how this effects the Resistance, or if it even does, or will. But you need to straighten this out, this thing between you guys. Now. Before something else happens.”

“I don’t know how,” she admitted, turning away, heading down the tunnel. “But I’ll try.”

“Well, you could start with not wiping your mouth off after he kisses you,” Poe muttered just loudly enough for Rey to hear. She flushed, glad her back was to him so he wouldn’t see, reaching up to touch her lips. Yes, that would probably help.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As I said when this was first posted to tumblr, TRLS was meant to be a oneshot in response to the prompt but some of the readers on that site liked it so much they urged me to write a second part; @littlegreeninatophat and @kaceface82-blog still have all my love for keeping really being the voices that made this series a thing! Always comment on the writing people offer up for free on the internet, people, it makes a MOUNTAIN of difference, it really, really does! :)
> 
> To see my stuff on tumblr, follow the link below. I always upload to tumblr first!
> 
> https://how-do-i-turn-this-thing-off.tumblr.com/


	3. Ren flees the Resistance after meeting with but being rejected by Rey when he still refuses to join the Rebel cause

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After having a moment with Rey in his cell but being subsequently rejected yet again, Ren leaves the Rebel base to return to the First's Orders lines

The ceiling of the tunnel cracked, collapsing under the pressure of Ren’s Force push as he carefully navigated the faults in the rocks and dirt behind him, causing a controlled cave-in that blocked the way he’d come. It was the third such tunnel collapse since he’d left Rey and he viewed it with some grim satisfaction. It would make it harder for the First Order to infiltrate the Rebel’s underground headquarters but there were plenty of other tunnels, they’d get through somehow. In the meantime it’d make it far more difficult to follow him out, even if they- she- wanted to. 

His work had disrupted the electrical lines down this way enough to have taken out all the lights, plunging him into the perfect blackness that could only exist underground. He used his other senses to see, stretching them into a net, a radar. All the tunnels near him were completely deserted; understandable, since Poe had probably ordered everyone out of his way. It wasn’t as though any of the Rebels were going to be successful if they tried to stop him from leaving. Why Poe had attempted to take Ren prisoner in the first place was mystifying to start with, especially given he’d only come to them to save the neck of their best fighter. Once again, conclusive proof that there was no honor amongst thieves.

Rey. He ran a hand over his face, brushing away the thin sheen of sweat on his skin; the tunnels were hot and humid, and he’d covered a lot of ground quickly, but nothing could budge that last image of her from his mind. He had no idea why he’d kissed her in the first place. Well, he had every idea, but it was impossible to pin down why he’d thought it would go well. Of course she’d rejected him, that was her signature move.

But she hadn’t rejected him at first, and that’s what made it sting.

He chose his next tunnel at random and continued forward, trusting he’d get back to the lines of the First Order one way or the other. He let his rage and frustration and yes, even a little genuine hurt bleed off him as he stalked through the darkness, let it run through him and past him, only holding on to what he needed, building it, focusing it. In normal circumstances it wasn’t hard to do, but now he had almost too much to work with.

She’d wiped her mouth off after he’d kissed her. He lashed the excess pain, the wrath, down the tunnel in front and behind him like a whip, daring anyone to get near him as he fought the memory. The wound was so fresh it was practically all he could feel no matter how he tried to fight it down, and hatred festered in his every breath, every movement, tingling along his scalp and tightening the muscles down his spine until he was half-surprised he couldn’t see it physically shimmering off him. He could have lashed out at her in that moment. He could have– he didn’t want to think what he could have done. Didn’t want to see it. That only fed his anger, the wrong kind of anger, the brand he had particular difficulty controlling.

Ben. He stumbled and almost fell as the word twined down the bond and bloomed in his mind, his thoughts raging like a feral storm then suddenly, cruelly, filled with nothing but the sound of his name in her voice. His original name, said the way only she could say it. Ren put out a hand, leaning against the wall with a snarl, clamping down on the bond with everything he had to crush it out, freeze it, burn it, but he was a Force being himself and could do absolutely nothing to this horrible tether of pure energy than had enslaved him, this tugging insistence that led back to her, always, always, back to her.

Ben. How was she doing this? She’d never spoken in his head before. Please, she added, another shot straight to the heart. In it he heard the echo of his own begging from that terrible day, that red, red day, when he’d held out his hand and she’d pretended she would take it then betrayed him. He squeezed his eyes shut, focusing. There was a feeling to the voice he could reverse engineer, a strange signature of energy that he could use to do it himself.

No, he told her, hoping he could push through all his condemnation, his fury, the tired rot inside of him that grew every moment he thought of her, decaying everything else.

Ben.

NO, he repeated, more hatred, more acid, throwing it at her.

Wait for me. Clearer, more pleading, a shadow sensation of guilt and something he could only understand as longing, identical in every way to what he’d been feeling for so long. He snarled out loud again, slamming his fist into the wall with more than just his physical strength, feeling the weaknesses in the rock spiderwebbing around it. How was he supposed to interpret that?! Wait for her? Why should he? More emotions than he could contain or even understand boiled up in him, shaking his focus so severely it made his body itself shudder, and he felt in that moment he could have taken this whole damn place down with less than a thought.

“Ben.” Real, her voice here, now. He turned sharply and Rey was there in the tunnel, in the pitch black darkness, solid as she came slowly towards him, finding him with senses far more powerful than her eyes, stopping less than three feet away. The thing inside him that was trying to claw it’s way out pivoted, focusing on her and transforming into something infinitely more dangerous than merely rage or hurt. There was a heartbeat where he still could have controlled it, turned it, but for the answering call that came from her in the bond and in the physical Force all around them, sweeping toward and through him and turning his mind into a blinding white heat that burned everything else to ash.

He slammed into her, his hands, his mouth, in the absolute darkness, blindly finding a portion of the wall that was soil instead of stone and trapping her against it, pinning her there with his body but with far more than that; with their combined Force power, the ferocity of the need that crushed the whole universe down to this cramped and humid tunnel, that shook the stars in the sky as he roared it at her in his mind, sending the challenge straight into her head the same way she’d said his name, blotting out any other thought she had, replacing them all with him.

She was his. He could feel it, he could taste it, under his hands, across his mouth, as she yielded for him, surrendering completely, laying her own mind bare to him so he could take that too. Her legs opened and he grabbed them behind the knees, yanking her into the air, putting her around him and against him as her fingers threaded into his hair, as her lips gave way and he pushed their kiss into her, deeper, pressing her so hard into the soft loam wall that it made them both ache. Somewhere far away he cursed it, knowing that however this was destined to end that smell would follow him, the raw earth, bringing him forever back here to this moment, to the darkness and the need and to her.

But not yet. It hadn’t ended yet.

He gave her more of him, in his mind, in his hands and the searing need he was painting on the inside of her mouth, not even sure how there was more to give. At the same time he took just as much, ripping every sensation from her, leaving her raw and bare in the bond, in her mind, besieging her with the insistent truth of what she wanted, what she was willing to give. There was nowhere to hide, no lie she could tell, not with him turning her inside out, tasting her warm sweat as his lips, his tongue, made patterns of fire down her neck. His hands pinned her hips, keeping her in place underneath him, where she should be, where he’d keep her no matter how she flexed against him.

His. His, his, his. He didn’t bother to say it out loud, lapping the word against her thoughts like ocean waves, powerful, implacable, dragging her under. His, his, his.

“Ben,” she gasped, the name shooting through him like a star, burning, brilliant, almost overwhelming him as he let go of her hips with one hand and wrapped it around her throat, bringing her mouth back to his so he could claim it. With his other hand he braced himself against the wall, pushing even closer into her. She squirmed, trying to move her hips again, and finding very quickly that he didn’t need his hands anymore to pin her there.

“Rey,” he smirked against her lips as she realized, as the heat between them became something obvious, something definite, something with which he could overthrow her completely. His, his, his. There was a laugh as he thought it at her now, a song of triumph and of pure self-satisfaction as she suddenly and thoroughly remembered that he was a man.

She wanted to say something. He tightened the hand on her throat and readjusted, both his lips and his hold and elsewhere, pulling a moan from her that could have undone a lesser man. Fortunately there was nothing lesser about him. “You’re coming with me,” he murmured into her mouth, letting her taste the words as much as hear them.

“No.” A lie, and what a lie it was, flagrant and glaring, taking his breath away. He laughed in her thoughts again, flexing against her in case she’d somehow forgotten the proof of her eventual fate, of how this was going to end.

“You’re coming with me,” he repeated. “Of your own accord. Right now.”

“Stay,” she whispered.

“Hm,” he hummed against her ear. “Right here? No. Tempting, but no. I’ve had a thousand empty hours to decide how I want to do this, and as much as I appreciate the darkness, the heat, the privacy-,” he thrust against her firmly, a demonstration, a promise, “-this isn’t where I’m going to have you. Not the first time.” A tremor went through her in the base of her stomach and even lower than that at the implication that there would be other times and it was his turn to groan his satisfaction, expressing to her just how much he appreciated her response. A concussion sounded far away, the echo of a bomb, maybe, or lasercanon fire, shaking the ground where he stood and the tunnel wall where he’d pinned her.

“I can’t go.” And there it was, that single whisper of defiance, that gossamer-thin line separating them, always, always. She was his, and she knew it. He would have her, and she knew it. But even now that line remained taut, burning like hot plasma, cutting them in two though they should be one.

It was wrong. It was wrong that there was still something, anything, that could hold them apart. He released the hand around her throat and fired his lightsaber, the red blade burning back the eternal night of the underground, showing him her face as his eyes adjusted. She was crying in his arms, underneath him with her hands clutching the front of his padded tunic as though to keep him with her by that means alone, and looked back at him with so much emotion he couldn’t take it, dipping in to kiss her again if only to have an excuse to close his eyes.

“I didn’t ask for this,” he murmured against her lips, not sure what he meant. Her? The bond? This feeling, this disappointment, the way it ate at him and crippled him day by day, moment by moment? Or something else, something larger, the chasm between them that they had been standing on either side of ever since the Starkiller pulled them apart from each other.

“I didn’t but I would have,” she murmured back, the tunnel shaking from another hit, First Order or Rebellion, it was impossible to say. “If I’d known it was possible, if I’d known it was there, I would have asked for you.”

Damn her. Damn her. He pulled his lips away, wrapping his free arm around her waist and hiding his face in her shoulder as her arms wrapped around him in return and hugged him close. She was tearing him down and she could see it, as much in his mind as he was in hers, unmaking him stone for stone, brick for brick. To what purpose? What did she think would still be there when she was done? “There will never be a way through this,” he told her.

“There is,” she insisted.

“I’m not staying.”

“Maybe not today, but what about the next time you find us?” she asked, tightening her arms and her words around him with so much ache in her voice, so much hope. “We’ll meet again. You will always have another chance to make this choice.”

“A lifetime of repeating myself and knowing you will never listen!” he growled. “Is that what this is?”

“No. Not a lifetime.” She moved her hands to his chest, pushing him back, but he only retreated far enough to see her face. “We’re going to win, Ben,” she told him. “We’re going to defeat the First Order, even if you don’t choose us. The seeds of the Resistance are in every system, every galaxy, in the heart of everyone who wants more, a better life. We will always rise again, always keep coming back. And someday we will win.”

He shook his head at her. “That’s not what’s going to happen, Rey.”

“It is,” she said, touching his face, her fingers running down the ridge of the scar she’d given him as more concussions shook the tunnel, sifting some loose dirt from the ceiling above. “If you can’t leave them then I’ll destroy them all, and that will set you free.”

“The First Order can’t be destroyed.”

She just smiled, unwrapping herself from him but staying in his arms, clasping his hand and brushing her lips against his. “I’m coming for you, Ben Solo.”

The tunnel shook again, harder this time, and he threw a little of his attention that way, glancing through and into the rocks around them just in time to see the fracturing and know what it meant. He turned and pushed her, hard, as the ceiling caved in, shooting them both away from the impact zone but in different directions. A mountain of rock and rubble fell like a curtain between them, cutting off his view of her as he scrambled backwards, trying to focus with his mind and lift it. It couldn’t be done; there was too much weight from above, bearing down, so that if he moved the blockage out of the way he would only trigger a greater response from the collapsing earth.

He could feel in the bond that she was fine and held onto that as he stood, throwing his senses toward her. They told him nothing he didn’t already know and he cursed them, shouting his frustration at the impassible barrier. Why had he stopped to kiss her, to hold her?! The moment he had his hands on her he should have taken her with him, though she would have fought like a wildcat, though he would have had to drag her every step of the way.

But at least there was that between them, something new, a clear and unmistakable desire that he would use to his advantage in every way he could. She might be tearing him down but he was building her up, layer by layer, blocking her in with the need and the frustration she couldn’t deny she’d felt as much as him. It couldn’t be long now; even if they were apart he knew she’d dream of him tonight, which seemed only fair considering how long he’d dreamed of her.

It wasn’t until he turned to go back to the First Order’s vanguard, splaying out his senses, that he realized they’d been cut off from each other– and they were each on the wrong side of the line.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The note I included when this was first posted to my tumblr, which still very much holds true:
> 
> Thanks (and blame) to @keepingupwiththekhaaaannn , @deadgirlonsteroids , @alittlebitiffy , @kaceface82-blog , @ravenmoon135 , and @littlegreeninatophat , for pushing me to keep it up. I can’t tell you how damn delicious this was to write and it wouldn’t have happened at all without you :)
> 
> If you want to see Reylo meta and general nonsense, as well as the original posts of TRLS, follow this link:
> 
> https://how-do-i-turn-this-thing-off.tumblr.com/


	4. Rey is trapped behind enemy lines

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After being separated from Ren and the other Rebels by an unexpected cave-in Rey is forced to navigate the invading First Order troops on her own while trying to find a way back to safety

Rey pushed her senses past the cave-in where it had blocked her and Ben off from each other, trying to tell if he was okay, but all she could make out for sure was that he was there. But she’d know if he was hurt, wouldn’t she? She would, of course she would.

The tunnels were dark and grumbling around her as more heavy weapons fire reverberated from above, sending thin streams of dirt and debris falling from the ceiling and the walls, threatening more cave-ins. She turned toward the open tunnels, searching through them with her mind for which ones were still clear, which ones were the most stable, and starting forward. She didn’t want to leave Ben behind but she couldn’t stay, not now that they were separated with no way to get to each other. Besides, the Rebellion needed her more than he did right now. There would be other meetings. She’d have more chances to try to convince him. It was disappointing- more than disappointing, frustrating, bewildering, painful- that she couldn’t get him to come with her this time, but she’d just have to try again. She reminded herself of that as she went forward in the darkness, carefully monitoring the tunnels for any potential disastrous weaknesses. Try again, and again, and again after that, no matter how many times it took. He’d get there when he got there, as long as she held the door open for him. One of them would end up coming to the other. It would be him.

She was so busy bolstering her spirits and keeping her senses focused on the tunnels that it took her several long, precious moments to orient herself and realize that it wasn’t farther inward she was heading– it was farther out. She stopped dead, panicking as she threw her awareness out to its limits in every direction. There was no way back. The cave-ins, and Ben himself, had made sure to block those entrances. The two she had shifted to get to him had crumbled again after she’d left.

The only way forward was toward the enemy. And staying, she quickly decided as the earth rumbled around her, staying was not an option. She moved blindly, seeking, trying to come up with something. Without even a lightsaber there was no way to defend herself adequately; even if she had had a lightsaber she couldn’t stand against the whole First Order and expect to survive more than a minute. No, this would require stealth, stealth and an incredible helping of luck.

The Force was with her, flowing, strong, and she focused on that. She was smart, she was capable, and she had the Force. She could do it.

A glimmer of light appeared from somewhere up ahead, just a glow, suggesting she was close to the outside. The blows she could hear raining down from their weapons had become clearer, louder, more deafening, more severe. Were they deliberately trying to bring down the whole place on the Rebel’s heads? She hesitated, seeing a raw dirt wall before her, reminded for a blinding moment of what she and Ben had been doing in the tunnels that had got them into this mess. His hands- his body- the heat and solid size of him as he’d pressed her against the wall- she would have dirt in her hair for days.

The dirt. Camouflage.

She found the nearest loam wall and covered herself in it, as much as she could get, rubbing it down her arms and legs, grateful that Ben had already made sure it thoroughly soaked her back, though she vowed never to tell him that. She painted her face, arms, legs, covering every visible inch of herself in damp mud. It was hardly impenetrable but it would have to be.

Footsteps, marching in unison, sounded down the corridor. There was an outcropping just behind her and she ran to it, to the shadow it created, not quite an alcove but more of a depression in the dirt and rock. She fit, just barely.

“Squad 8 to the right, Squads 9 and 10 to the left. Stay sharp,” a technologically distorted voice said from farther down the tunnel. Stormtroopers. She clenched her fists, wishing and wishing she had a lightsaber, or even her staff.

They advanced methodically, sweeping their lights back and forth, focusing more on where the tunnel curved ahead than on the uneven walls themselves. Rey stayed completely still, only barely hidden, thinking at them ‘there’s nothing in this tunnel, there’s nothing in this tunnel’ again and again, willing her breathing to be even and light, letting the Force flow through and out of her.

“Stay sharp,” one of the stormtroopers ordered the others. He was the one nearest her, and his footsteps sounded only inches away. He appeared past the outcropping, sweeping his light in a hard arc that would end squarely on her midsection.

'There’s nothing in this tunnel, there’s nothing in this tunnel,’ Rey pushed at him, hard.

The light stopped barely a centimeter from her hand, hovering for a moment almost as though it was being restrained. “I don’t think there’s anything in this tunnel,” the stormtrooper decided, sweeping it back into forward position.

'We should check farther down,’ Rey thought at him.

“Let’s check farther down,” he repeated almost eerily. It sent a tingle up her spine but he wasn’t the only stormtrooper there and she thought it at the next one, them the next one, until they’d all passed her by, never once sweeping their lights over her hiding place. They disappeared around the bend and the moment the last one was gone she jumped back into open view, sprinting away. There had to be some path through. She was behind their vanguard- now if she could just get behind their line-.

“I want every available scanner we have focusing on the central convergence point of these tunnels,” a man’s voice ordered, sharp with arrogance, far away but gaining on her. “If they try to escape in any direction we must concentrate all available resources along that route. Not one single rebel is to leave here alive.”

“Yes sir,” a chorus of voices sounded immediately, followed by more marching footsteps. Rey skidded to a halt, stretching her senses in all directions again but finding no way out. It wouldn’t be enough to try and control the minds of every single soldier in the First Order, to hope she could find a way past them. She could try to overcome one of the smaller groups and steal a blaster, but even then how long could she hold out? Long enough for Ben to find me, a small, hopeful voice in her head commented, a voice she quickly squashed. She couldn’t rely on Ben, not when he was so far away and they were cut off from each other for who knew how long.

Another group came her direction and she found another rough part of the wall and pressed herself into it. It didn’t hide her as well as the spot from before but she still turned their minds long enough for them to go past without seeing her- barely- and only once they were safely gone felt the sweat trickling down the back of her neck, a traitorous weakness starting to tremble in her muscles. It wasn’t that long since she’d almost died from the wound she’d received trying to defend these tunnels, since she’d had to go right back to work for the Rebellion again, and her body could be pushed but not a whole lot further. Think Rey, she urged herself. She wasn’t going to get through them… but she didn’t need to get through them. She just needed to get around.

When the way was clear again she oriented herself, not towards the First Order lines, but parallel to them and started searching out tunnels that led south. The Rebellion was indeed planning a daring escape, one that should already be well on its way, but if she could get to the southern tunnels she might be just quick enough to track them down while staying ahead of the First Order troops who would no doubt be trying to do the same thing.

She wove her way through the pattern of the advancing stormtroopers squads, glad that at least the first couple waves had already passed her by. She was wholly reliant on the Force for her timing, and it flowed through her so strong and sure it seemed to saturate every breath, every heartbeat. Without it she would have been captured or dead in minutes, if not less, but with it she managed to just barely evade disaster.

A feeling brushed her mind, a feeling that was not hers but was not foreign either. Ben. She slowed a couple steps, reaching towards him in her mind, but there was nothing to grab onto. He wasn’t close enough, or else he was exhausted and distracted, too.

“Sir!” a voice sounded from a crossroads directly in front of her and she literally skidded to a halt, backpedaling around the bend she’d just passed. “They’re headed south!”

“Has the General been informed of this?”

“No, sir! The scanner just found them.”

“Show me.”

Rey hesitated only a moment, pressing herself into the wall, but she had to act and with a surge of Force energy she propelled herself around the corner with unnatural speed. She had no weapon but for this she needed no weapon– she bowled right past the two stormtroopers who looked up as she came on, frozen in shock, then slid to a halt a few feet farther down the tunnel, crouching to make herself a smaller target. She’d thrown out tethers as she went, seeking, finding purchase where for anyone else there would have been none, and now she gathered them together in her mind. The stormtroopers raised their weapons, one of them shouting, “There!” but it was already too late. Rey pulled, a great crack sounded as a fissure appeared directly above them, and the ceiling came tumbling down. They were crushed instantly, the offending scanner tumbling from the hand of its owner and landing at her feet.

“Thanks,” she said irreverently, scooping it up. Distant shouts of alarm told her the cave-in have been noticed and she turned and ran, holding the scanner screen close, studying it as she went. It marked the tunnels and the heat signatures of the people moving in them; nothing she hadn’t already been doing herself but that last stunt had left her feeling only more drained and she was glad to let go of that part of her control, sifting away out of her mind like the last bit of sand falling from an hourglass. She had to conserve her strength so she followed the green and black screen forward and ignored the chaos and death she’d left behind as another crack sounded, then another, the fissure she’d created growing both in size and in deadliness, raining destruction down first one tunnel and then another, the cries of its victims sharply cut off one by one.

Rey squinted, focusing. The screen did show a knot of heat signatures moving apart from the others, following a hidden faultline in the earth she’d discovered and expanded for them barely hours ago. It wasn’t much, and it would be a narrow and uncomfortable journey, but it went far enough to let the Rebels resurface out of the First Order’s line of sight; as long as the sensors stayed trained on the central hub of the tunnels they should then be safe to begin the journey back to their ships where they’d been hidden and make the jump to the refuge of endless, empty space. Rose had been working hard on creating some portable versions of the electromagnetic plating they’d been using at their barricades to confuse the sensors, but now looking down at a sensor of her own the gaps in the line were painfully obvious. The signatures were still few, and blurred, enough to almost read as a malfunction but not quite.

Rey veered down one tunnel then another, heading inwards at last. She was far enough south to be near the fissure opening, and if she could just get down to it in time she’d be– well, not safe, but on her way to something like it. The hub was just on the other side of a cave-in, another of her own personal creations, but she remembered this one specifically because even though it looked like it blocked off the whole tunnel there was still some open space at the top. Poe had said it would be good enough and she’d agreed, knowing he was worried about her strength and secretly worrying about the same thing herself. Now she was inexpressibly grateful she’d abandoned the project early, since it offered her a way back in only she would know about.

Radio crackle sounded from somewhere down the tunnel to her right and she glanced at her scanner. The First Order soldiers were reorienting, turning south as well, meaning someone else had discovered the fleeing Rebels and this time the message had gotten through. She had seconds, maybe, seconds as she skidded around yet another corner and saw the cave-in. Stormtroopers were closing in behind her and she stuffed the scanner into her belt and started to climb.

“I heard something!” one of them commented to another. They hadn’t seen her yet. Still around the corner, their lights safely sweeping over something else.

“Where?”

“Just around here,” and two lights appeared, searching farther down as Rey scrambled up, up, using the barest trickle of the Force she could manage to find toeholds, footholds in the pile of loose rocks and dirt that hadn’t had time to settle yet.

“There!” A light found her, then the other. The sound of blaster fire but she heard it just in time and threw herself to one side, hanging by a hand from the lip of the gap she’d been looking for, wincing as she braced her legs and hauled herself up. Another blaster shot, destined to go wide from the start- a third she had to deflect with a heavy, off-balance Force push, the effort required making her grit her teeth- then she was up and over, throwing herself off the other side and crying out against her will as she rolled over one rock then another, slamming back-first into a boulder about halfway down that drove the breath from her lungs.

“Rebel sighted, rebel sighted!” one of the stormtroopers was yelling into a crackling radio. She curled forward, gasping and crying and panting as she tried to make her lungs remember how to breathe. She rolled too far and fell down to the next level of rock, landing hard on loose and cutting shale, leaving blood behind.

They were coming, she could hear them climbing and shouting to each other. It would take them longer than it had taken her, but not that much longer. She had to go.

That other sensation, in her mind. Ben. She fought to hold on to it, fought to send something down the bond to him, a single word, a reassurance, a plea, anything, but he was too far away and she couldn’t seem to get a firm grasp on however she’d done it before. He wasn’t able to send anything specific to her either, just the impression of him. She got to her knees, then on her feet, holding to it desperately like a lifeline as she at last remembered to breathe again.

Farther up this tunnel. The hub was farther up this tunnel. She reached for the scanner and found it was gone, then reached in her mind and located it two rocks up, smashed to pieces. The Force still flowed strongly but it was a trickle, a fragment, fading and scattering in response to her exhaustion. She was going to have to go in with just her own senses and nothing else.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another installment of the series that only exists because very kind, very insistent tumblr readers liked one of my one-shots enough to insist that the story couldn’t possibly end there! As for my new Ao3 readers, welcome and thank you, thank you, THANK YOU for all of your very kind kudos and subscriptions and comments!! TRLS is my first real foray into fanfiction- certainly the first time I've ever posted any of it- and it's always overwhelming and wonderful to see that people like it :)
> 
> As always, started on tumblr, access my blog here:
> 
> https://how-do-i-turn-this-thing-off.tumblr.com/


	5. Ren is trapped behind enemy lines

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Separated from Rey by an unexpected cave-in, Ren finds himself trapped on the wrong side of a Force Order incursion, surrounded by the Rebels instead of with his men. He retraces his steps back to the Rebel base, trying to find a way to get to Rey and knowing she's similarly at risk among the FO

“Rey?!” Ren shouted at the cave-in that had separated them, straining to hear any response. The darkness was silent, waiting with him, but nothing echoed back. She was trapped, the First Order was coming, and there was nothing he could do. He snapped his senses out around them, looking for a way through, and found none. The Rebels had done a good job trying to block the stormtrooper’s inevitable advance and the continuous heavy weapons fire that was raining down on the tunnel network from above had done the rest. Everything shook and heaved around him, ready to split and crush anything beneath it at a moment’s notice. Still he stayed by the wall of rock and earth in his way, reaching through it.

“Rey,” he breathed again, but she had gone beyond where he could reach her in their bond. She’d try to find a way through on her own, of that he was sure. Which left him only one option; the most unpleasant and least promising one, of course.

He traveled back the way he’d come, having to make a wide arc to find the very last clear way through. It took time and he itched to draw the lightsaber from his belt just to slash at the tunnel walls in his frustration. The hub was the central point where all the tunnels connected; if she made it through she’d try to get there. Which meant that was where he had to be, either to find her again or to go after her from an access point that would actually be able to give him clear passage to the part of this labyrinth where she was.

The Rebels were not pleased to see him when he returned but this time no one drew their blasters and it felt almost like they were staring at him, not with the usual fear and disdain, but with something approaching wary curiosity. Idiots. What if he’d come back to kill them all? Seeing their odd expressions he was almost tempted to.

“Where’s Rey?” someone demanded, and he turned at the familiar presence he felt on his left, a man watching him with a hard, suspicious expression.

“FN-2187.” The only person here who had so far exhibited any sense, and that purely because the First Order had trained him. Never let your guard down. Never assume you have friends.

“Where is she?” the former stormtrooper repeated, hand twitching as though he’d like to go for his blaster.

“In the tunnels.”

“She knows better than that.”

“What’s this?” Another familiar voice. Ren was starting to become a little irritated that he personally recognized the ranking filth in this illegitimate militia as he turned toward Poe and raised his eyebrows.

“Were you expecting some other Supreme Leader?” he asked.

“I wasn’t expecting any Supreme Leader, I thought you were leaving.” He didn’t go for his blaster, either. And they called him their new General? “Where’s Rey?”

“She’s in the tunnels.”

“Why?”

“We got separated.”

“How?”

“Does it matter?” Ren snapped, trying to reach out with his feelings. She wasn’t hurt or dead, but that was all he could tell for sure. “I need to find her. Where are your scanners?”

“We don’t have time for this, we’re moving out,” Poe said decisively, shaking his head.

“Poe–!” FN-2187 protested.

“Look, I want to go after her too, okay?” Poe interrupted him, holding up his hands in a peace gesture. “But Rey knows where we’re headed and she’s probably the only one of us who stands a chance of getting through on their own. Anyone else goes out there they’ll get gunned down. They best thing we can do for her is stay on task so it’s as easy as possible for her to find us.”

“That’s not going to work,” Ren said flatly.

“What am I supposed to do, ‘Supreme Leader’?” Poe asked, putting unpleasant emphasis on the title. “We blocked off almost every tunnel into here for a reason, even if I could get my guys out there they’d most likely end up with their backs against a dead end and a hundred stormtroopers on their tail.”

“I’ll do it myself,” Ren decided, spotting a pallet of supplies being broken down into smaller packs for transport and stepping around Poe, heading that way. What a colossal waste of his time, but somewhere in the back of his mind he was also grimly pleased to see the rebels showing their true colors. These were the people Rey would die for, had almost died for that same day, and they couldn’t give less of a shit about her. He looked forward to telling her word for word how quickly they’d written her off, once he found her and was sure she was safe.

“Yeah, you going off on your own’s not going to happen, either,” Poe said, following him. FN-2187, fortunately, did not. “If you could get through the cave-ins you would have done it already, which means you need us.”

“I don’t need you,” Ren all but snarled, assessing the nearest sacks of equipment.

“I think you do, because Rey’s smart, and she’s fast, and she’s going to be using all her smarts and all her fast to try to get out somehow and rendezvous with us. And I know where we’re going; you don’t.”

Ren turned on him, grabbing him by the front of the jacket. “Tell me.”

“No,” Poe responded flatly, looking unfazed. “You come with us or you don’t find out.”

“I can take it from your mind, I’ve done it before.”

“You can’t. You don’t have the extra time, and if you really want to save Rey then I think you don’t have the extra juice.”

Ren let go of the jacket and shoved him away in a single motion, clamping down on his frustration. Breaking into Poe’s mind wouldn’t stretch his abilities too far, even now, but Poe was right when he said it would be time-consuming, especially if Ren was fighting off the entire Rebellion while he was trying to do it. “I don’t need to come with you,” Ren finally decided out loud. “If Rey gets captured they’ll bring her to me anyway. It doesn’t matter what happens to the Rebellion.”

“Yeah? They’ll bring her to you, you’re sure about that?”

“They have their orders.”

“Your boy Hux had his orders not to attack, and I don’t know what you think an attack is but this looks pretty damn similar to me.”

“Hux will be easy to kill.”

“Okay, well in the meantime you still need to find her first. So you come with us, and you get her back.”

“It would be unwise to want me to accompany you,” Ren reminded him, a little incredulous that it had to be said at all.

“Yeah, well, I think so too but what can I do? You saved her life, and didn’t cut us down before or after even though you could have. And you’re Leia’s son.”

“Don’t call me that.”

Poe looked up sharply at the raw, flat condemnation in Ren’s tone, finally studying him properly. The moment felt oddly like a stand-off, even though Ren was practically twice his size and fairly confident he could slice the Rebel leader in half in less time than it took to draw a breath. Still, there was something almost powerful about Poe, something sure and potentially deadly that for a moment made Ren reach out in the Force, curious. Not a trace of Force use or even Force sensitivity, exactly the same as when he had interrogated him before. He was almost disappointed.

“Well, either way,” Poe finally said, “I’m the one who sent Rey into those tunnels after you. I thought whatever this thing is you guys have got going on, it was sure to get both her and probably the Rebellion in hot water sooner rather than later. And here we are, Rey trapped behind enemy lines and you standing in our midst with your hand an inch from your lightsaber, contemplating killing us all.”

“It’s crossed my mind.”

“We don’t have the time to wait,” Poe said, turning away and heading in the direction it looked like most of the Rebels were clustering, toward the southern side of the hub. “If we make it through Rey will find us. Or you can take your chances and go looking for her blind. Your choice.”

Ren frowned, looking over his shoulder in the direction where he’d last seen her, forcing his mind out to it’s farthest capacity. He felt her, in the bond, brushing just barely against the sensation of her mind where it met and joined with his, but that was all. There was no way to tell exactly where it came from or how to get there; even if he did just take one of the Rebel’s sensors how would he be able to distinguish her heat signature from the hundreds of stormtroopers already bearing down on them? She would do everything she could to join the Rebels wherever it was they were going, so if he wanted to find her again it looked like that was where he had to be.

If, somehow, she couldn’t make it- if she was hurt or killed, or if Hux got his hands on her and did anything, anything at all-.

“Heard you didn’t order this attack,” someone said, deliberately shoulder-checking him as he passed by. FN-2187. Of course.

“I should execute you right now,” Ren deadpanned.

“Are you surprised, though?” FN-2187 continued, ignoring the threat. “That Hux is a power-hungry psychopath who will stop at nothing to control the whole First Order from his bridge? I mean, that didn’t actually catch you off guard, right?”

“General Hux is going to regret disregarding his orders.”

“Yeah, I bet, I bet he is,” FN-2187 said sarcastically, putting on one of the packs and shoving another one at Ren. “Everyone carries their weight here, 'Supreme Leader’.” Ren put the pack on without comment, glad to have it, even. There was very little chance he’d have to put up with the Rebel’s company much longer than a few hours but when he did split off from them and seek out his own troops it would be better to have some basic supplies on hand. He turned away from FN-2187, who looked deeply nonplussed at his lack of reaction, and followed the general flow of traffic towards the southern end of the hub. No one spoke to him but no one seemed to think his presence among them was a disastrous plan either, which he ignored rather than trying to wrap his head around it. At this point killing a few of them on his way out and thus reminding them of the benefits of vigilance would be doing their whole movement a service.

Off the main hub was another, smaller cave, little more than an unfinished tunnel that dead-ended, empty except for a pallet and a crack in the ground. It was into this crack the Rebels were filing, one after another, carefully letting themselves down into the unseen depths below. Poe helped each person who looked as though they might need it.

“Rey helped us widen this fissure earlier,” he explained as Ren approached, hardly glancing up. “Now it takes us to another part of the tunnel system, an area the First Order has abandoned as they’ve advanced. With any luck we can get past them before they realize which way we’re heading. It’s going to be a squeeze, especially for you, but we’ll all get through if we take it slow.”

“Taking it slow might not be the best idea,” Ren pointed out.

“Taking it slow’s our only shot,” Poe said, stepping back and gesturing. “Alright, you guys are all that’s left. Who’s going in first?”

“I’ll go last,” Ren volunteered. All the better to leave them behind as easily as possible the moment Rey showed up.

“No can do, I’m last so I can seal it up,” Poe said without so much as blinking, gesturing to the pallet.

“I don’t want to go,” a short girl next to Ren muttered, staring at the crack like it was the opening to hell.

“Here, I’ll go,” FN-2187 offered, coming forward. “I’ll help you down after me, okay Rose?”

“Okay,” the girl said, looking somewhat relieved. FN-2187 was as good as his word, disappearing into the fissure long enough to shed his pack before popping back out, gesturing for Rose. She went to him willingly enough considering the obvious fear Ren could feel seeping from her like a fine mist, letting him help her down.

“It’s all you,” Poe said, turning to him. “It’s going to be tight– sure you’re not going to panic?”

“Yes,” Ren said shortly, heading forward. The uneven crack was the top of a slope of jagged footholds, cut at random out of the rock. He found his way down easily enough but the General hadn’t been bluffing when he’d warned how close it would be, the living rock brushing his shoulders on either side. The air down here was even more humid than it had been in the darkened tunnels, almost fetid with the heavy sense of trepidation before him as Rose hurried along, FN-2187 holding her hand. Behind him Poe finished shifting the pallet into place and scrambled down, looking like he’d done it a thousand times already.

They continued forward in a row, FN-2187 the only one speaking as he muttered endless advice to Rose- 'step over here, balance on this’- getting her through the rough terrain and her nerves in one. Poe didn’t try to make conversation, fortunately, nor did Ren have anything to say to him.

A choke point came up about ten minutes into their journey, and despite FN-2187’s care Rose came to a stumbling halt the moment she saw it. Even FN-2187 barely fit through and he had to fight to do it, taking off his bag and holding it in one hand. Rose tried to follow, hesitated, then tried again, forcing herself in sideways.

“You can do it,” FN-2187 told her, hidden from sight on the other side. “Come on, just a few more steps, you’re almost through.”

“I- I can’t breathe!” Rose panicked, her emotions fluctuating in the Force, trying to buck her control. “I don’t like it, Finn, Finn, I can’t fit!”

“They’re coming,” Poe muttered to Ren, low enough that Rose wouldn’t be able to hear. Ren glanced back and saw the General gesturing to his scanner, where the signatures in the tunnels above were clearly wheeling towards the southernmost exits of the hub. “We have to move.”

“Rose,” FN-2187 said at the same time, his voice calm but strained. “You got this. Take one step, come on, just one step.”

“I- I can’t do it,” Rose said, turning towards Ren, trying to back out of the tight passage. “I’m sorry, I can’t.” She had tears on her face, more streaming down every second as Ren felt her emotions fracturing her judgment, making her struggle, scrambling against the rock with her bare hands.

“Hey,” Ren said, holding out a hand to stop her. “You can’t come this way, you have to go forward.”

“No,” she insisted, wild in her terror, eyes unfocused as the tried to snatch his hand out of her way. “NO.”

“Rose,” he insisted, as quietly and as calmly as he could manage, reaching for her mind in the Force. She was so emotionally unbalanced it was easy to find a way in and he took hold of her thoughts gently, letting her conform to his unfamiliar but steadier presence rather than forcing it on her. “Rose,” he repeated, manually turning her attention toward him, and her eyes snapped to his face, her hands going still. “You need to go forward. You cannot go backward.”

“I- I can’t breathe,” she told him, her panic making her fear slippery in his grasp.

“You can,” he told her. “You can. Try.” She did, and as she did her expression relaxed a fraction. “Good,” Ren said, resisting the urge to remember the Padawan first forms he’d learned an age ago. “Do it again.” She did, and in her mind her thoughts relaxed, handing over control. “Finn is waiting for you,” Ren said. “You have to go forward.”

“Okay,” Rose said, nodding, turning back the other way.

“One step,” Ren muttered, pushing himself in after her, trying not to crowd her too closely and risk panicking her again. It was an extremely tight squeeze for him, the rock vise on either side of his chest pushing the air from his lungs as his ribcage was forced to compress. “One more step,” he still managed to say. “One more.” Rose went forward as smoothly and obediently as a child, and he waited until he felt her relief- real relief, not the imitation he’d been feeding her- before letting go, slipping back out of her mind.

Pushing himself through was not pleasant. The rocks tore at his clothing, and thick as it was it ripped across his shoulders and he felt the pain and the blood that let him know he was literally scraping his way out. He bit his lip on it and kept going, emerging on the other side to find FN-2187 was still there but Rose had continued on.

“What did you do to her?” FN-2187 demanded, his anger hot and almost strong enough to cover his underlying sense of betrayal.

“To Rose?” Ren asked, putting his pack back on and failing to completely hide his wince as it impacted his bleeding shoulders. “I’d say I saved her life.”

“We don’t have time for this,” Poe said, emerging from the choke point after them. “Keep moving.”

“If you hurt her in any way–,” FN-2187 growled, backing down the tunnel nonetheless.

“I pushed my way into her mind and controlled her fear long enough that she didn’t rip herself to shreds trying to crawl out of that rock,” Ren said unsympathetically. “If you have a problem with that–.”

“He doesn’t have a problem with that, he’s very grateful,” Poe snapped, giving FN-2187 an extremely irritated look that would have done Leia proud. “And while he’s meditating on how grateful he is we’re going to get down this fissure in one piece, alright? Go.”

“If you touch her again I’ll kill you,” FN-2187 said, turning away.

“I didn’t touch her to start with,” Ren muttered, but if FN-2187 heard he ignored it. They continued on another minute, quickly enough that they’d almost caught up with the rest of the group when Ren suddenly felt a blow to his back and staggered a couple paces, bracing himself with an arm against the wall.

“Ren?” Poe said, his voice sharp.

“Rey,” Ren said as he turned back the way they’d come, throwing his senses like a net towards the source of the blow, not his own pain but hers. He felt her again, that sensation in his mind, quicksilver slipping through his fingers no matter how he tried to grasp it.

“What is it?!” Poe asked urgently, grabbing Ren’s shoulder. “Is she hurt? How bad?”

“She’s hurt,” Ren murmured, trying to find out for himself, but the shadow of the pain in his back was already fading. “Not bad, I think.”

“Okay,” Poe muttered, looking back too as though he could blindly see right through the rock. “Okay, well, that means she’s close right? If you can feel it? How close do you guys have to be?”

“I don’t know,” Ren admitted as she slipped from his mind again and was gone.

“Keep going,” Poe said, physically pushing him on. “We have to get out. Whatever happens, we have to get out, it’s our best shot for her and for us.”

“This better work,” Ren said, continuing forward.

“You’re not the only one hoping that it does,” Poe muttered under his breath. “No more stops, we can’t risk it. And Ren?” Ren glanced over his shoulder, meeting the General’s uncompromising stare. “You try to get in the minds of any more of my guys it better be life or death, understand?”

“You’re welcome,” Ren said sarcastically, facing front before Poe could see him frown. What was with these people? How had they survived so long like this? No discipline, no training, no structure of any kind. People like Rose were the furthest thing from soldiers, and she was shacking up with the Rebellion thinking she was going to beat the First Order? With what, panic attacks?

He rolled his shoulders, ignoring the sharp pain it earned him. The sooner he could shed these people like a bad memory the better.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's funny how the reception for Ren among the Rebels and Rey among the First Order is VASTLY different, though you wouldn't think that would necessarily be the case given circumstances. Ren's a VERY different Supreme Leader lol-- imagine what would have happened if Snoke, of all people, had found himself trapped with a bunch of Rebels. Imagine the absolute Scenes. I have trouble believing any of them would have been left alive


	6. Rey tries to get back to the Resistance

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Exhausted and becoming increasingly panicked, Rey tries to catch up to the other Rebels and to Ren

The hub echoed with emptiness, a large cave with several smaller caves bordering it and countless tunnels, leading away into the labyrinth of underground passages that spread out in every direction as far as the sensors could go. The Resistance had set up empty pallets and discarded containers in strategic positions to block a direct line of sight just in case the First Order managed to break through unexpectedly, and Rey ducked behind one just as the two stormtroopers that were right behind her emerged from the tunnel, the hard soles of their boots sounding loudly in the silence.

“Report back to the commander, we’ve found the main chamber of the Rebel hideout,” one ordered the other. The crackling of the radio was all the cover Rey needed to retreat further into the makeshift barricades, heading south. One of the small adjacent caves led to the fissure she’d helped to widen so the Rebels could safely retreat instead of finding themselves besieged, or even worse, invaded while they were still there. Behind her more footsteps sounded, other stormtroopers entering from unseen tunnels, different groups meeting and joining up with each other as they started to sweep the area.

“Focus your scans on the surrounding tunnels!” someone ordered, the arrogant, sneering voice she’d heard before. “They must have gone somewhere, find them!”

Rey found the cave and slipped inside. The pallet had been slid into place over the fissure’s entrance, hiding it from view, and sliding it away again would make noise that she wasn’t sure she could afford. There was no other option and she hesitated only a moment before bracing against the edge, pushing it sideways with a grinding, creaking sound the stormtroopers would have been able to detect from orbit. Shouts told her they were on their way but by then she’d exposed just enough of the opening to be able to slip inside, gasping as the rough edge tore at her skin. Just under the pallet she lifted and pulled, trying to move it back, but the angle was awkward and her arms were shaking with a combination of exhaustion and adrenaline.

“Check in here,” someone said, and as footsteps approached she was forced to freeze, crouching in the semi-darkness, hoping against hope that she wouldn’t be seen. This specific pallet had been rigged with more electromagnetic plating that would throw off the scanners, but it had to be squarely over the fissure to cover the whole area properly.

“Damn thing,” a stormtrooper muttered overhead, and she could see just the very edge of his helmet as he turned away, shaking the scanner. Rey braced her hands against the pallet again then hesitated. If she made any noise at all he’d know she was there.

“Look, Captain, I think I’ve got a faulty scanner again,” the stormtrooper said into his headset, facing away from her as she lifted in the Force and gently, ever so gently, started moving the pallet sideways. “Did we check the battery packs for this thing?” There was a moment of silence, gut-wrenching silence as the pallet wobbled dangerously, then Rey gave it one final wave of Force strength and it hovered soundlessly into place, settling back down onto the cave floor with no more than the lightest sigh to indicate it’d moved at all.

Rey crouched in the darkness, hugging herself. Her arms still shook– no, it was her whole body shaking, and she could feel sweat breaking out on her hands, her face, her chest, pretty much everywhere. She listened hard but now everything above her was muffled, though she could still hear the stormtrooper’s voice, just not what he was saying.

When he did finally leave she gave it ten minutes of full, undisturbed silence before she moved again, telling herself she was making absolutely sure she hadn’t been spotted but also knowing she needed the rest as much as anything. She’d been tired before, she’d been exhausted before, but she’d never, ever felt anything like this. Her connection to the Force was still there, as strong as ever, but trying to use the Force was like trying to draw a boulder through a straw. She couldn’t even summon enough to bolster her senses in the dark and was forced to stumble slowly forward inch by torturous inch, running her hands along the wall, carefully placing her feet on the uneven floor. She slipped and fell twice, impacting hard and painfully against the rough rocks, before she finally accepted defeat and sat down in the most level place she could find. Until she’d recovered at least enough energy to be able to use the Force to see she wasn’t going anywhere fast, and she’d probably really injure herself eventually. She had no food, and no water, but the one thing she could do was sleep to regain her strength, and if nothing else at least the fissure was warm and dry and dark.

She closed her eyes and tried to clear her mind, feeling drowsiness start to claim her almost right away. The last thing she did was try to reach out for Ben, try to at least feel for their bond, but everything was darkness and nothingness, stretching out in her mind the same way it did in life, so she let go of that, too.

***

Something shook Rey awake, not a person but a motion, a shifting, sliding motion that pushed her forward and nearly knocked her over. Her eyes snapped open and she pivoted, throwing herself to the side just as the wall she’d been leaning on shuddered and collapsed. Slightly further behind her the makeshift tunnel’s roof collapsed and light poured in, artificial light that bobbed and bounced as the filtered voices of stormtroopers chattered over the settling of dust and debris.

Rey scrambled back to her feet and ran. They couldn’t have seen her yet- judging by the angle of the lights they hadn’t even entered the tunnels yet- but the excited pitch of the chatter suggested they still knew she was there. Scanners, probably. The others had been able to stuff some minor electroplating in their packs to shield them but she hadn’t gotten back in time to get a pack herself and she was still exposed.

Stormtroopers dropped into the tunnel behind her, still out of visual range but clearly in pursuit. She picked up the pace, reaching for the Force as she went, relieved to find it came much more easily to her than it had a little while before. She searched for cracks in the rock, weaknesses, further fissures in any direction that she could press on and redirect to bring another portion of the tunnel crumbling down, but found nothing. She was surrounded by the bedrock layer of the planet itself, living rock that had never yet been prised apart by freezing waters or blasted by harsh winds, and there were no weaknesses to be found. Nor was she strong enough now to rip it apart with raw Force strength, an action that severely drained her even at the best of times. A light bounced over her shoulder, then across her back.

“There! I see her!” a stormtrooper called out behind her. She felt the blaster bolt coming and ducked as the raw red light shot past her, leaving a char mark on the wall. “Stop, Rebel!”

“Follow her! We can’t let this one get away!” another stormtrooper ordered. “Tell the General we’re pursuing the girl.”

Rey swore, pushing herself forward on the uneven ground, stumbling a couple times as she tried to concentrate on her footing and on the blaster bolts coming at her from behind. One nearly grazed her outer thigh, singeing the fabric; another passed so close by her ear she smelled burning hair.

“Stop shooting!” the stormtrooper that seemed to be in charge ordered, his metallic voice echoing down the fissure. “The General wants her alive. Squads 16 and 8, continue on an intercept course and prepare to use concussive charges. Repeat, concussive charges ONLY. Forward.”

“Shit,” Rey muttered, spreading her awareness out in a halo around her, trying to find out where the intercept courses could be. She saw nothing, felt nothing except for the rock and her immediate pursuers. The fissure didn’t branch, cracking but only for a couple feet, leading to dead ends and more debris. There was nowhere someone could sneak up on her, nowhere for an ambush to hide.

She sensed for a moment the stormtroopers behind her falling sharply back, and the next moment there was a wave, a pulse, traveling downwards through the rock, hitting her physically before she felt it pop in her ears. A horrible bass sound thrummed through the whole fissure, pressing down with the weight of a titan, and as she instinctively curled herself sideways into the wall to try and avoid it as it slammed into her back, forcing her to her hands and knees. She cried out, squeezing her eyes shut, throwing the Force over her like a hard shell of energy, the wave of pressure breaking against it.

“Rebel’s down! I repeat, Rebel is down!” someone said from behind as the pressure suddenly dissipated and she slumped to the floor for a moment, exhausted. “We’ve got her! Don’t move, girl.” A blaster appeared above her, a light shining behind it. “This is FN-2188 reporting, we have the Rebel girl in custody.”

“FN-2188?” Rey murmured. Finn. The number right after Finn’s. His old unit? His old training mates? From the same quadrant? “Finn,” she said.

“Put your hands behind your back, wrists together,” the stormtrooper ordered, his blaster never wavering. Either he hadn’t heard her or he didn’t care. Rey moved very slowly to do as she was told, wincing as she belatedly discovered the screaming ache across her back from the pressure that had slammed into it. “Do it, rebel scum!” the stormtrooper ordered.

“I am,” she growled, gritting her teeth against the pain. It seemed to be draining away somehow, not just in response to adrenaline but faster than usual, as if it was being siphoned off. Was the weapon a trick? Some kind of illusion? She shook her head, focusing, sending a tendril of Force power towards the stormtrooper and his blaster. She’d taken blasters apart before, she knew what made them tick. She focused on the dedlanite core and tweaked it, just a little.

“What the–?” the stormtrooper muttered as the blaster suddenly overheated in his hand; there was only a split second to smell the superheated metal, then–.

Rey threw herself to the side as above her the blaster exploded, the stormtrooper screaming and reflexively throwing up an arm to shield his eyes from the mini fireball that had briefly flared in front of him. Rey had had her eyes shut from the start but now she opened them, leaping to her feet and sprinting forward, making it to the shelter of the next rock outcropping before more bolts came streaking after her, leaving char marks in their wake.

“Follow her! Don’t let her get away!” the stormtrooper in charge snapped. “FN-2188, report to medical immediately!” Rey bit her lip as she heard the almost-familiar number, wondering. She’d have to ask Finn later if she’d just blown the hand- or a least a couple of fingers- off of someone he knew.


	7. Ren and the Rebels escape without Rey

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rey falls too far behind Ren and the Rebels and they have no choice but to go on without her

Ren could feel that Rey was in trouble and it was torture for him to go on knowing she was somewhere behind them, needing him. The pain in his back increased and it was impossible to say whether it was still reflected off of her and she was in more and more pain or if it was some fluctuation of the bond, magnifying it. He drew it on anyway, pulling it toward him like his end of a tether, as if he could physically drag her to him.

“Do you know where she is?” Poe muttered behind him. They’d fallen back a little so that FN-2187 and Rose were several steps ahead, out of easy hearing distance.

“No,” Ren muttered shortly. “Only that she’s behind me somewhere.”

“So she could be in the tunnel?” Poe summarized.

“Yes. If I knew for sure I wouldn’t still be here,” he said, slanting a glance over his shoulder to make sure Poe knew he was serious.

“Okay, so we just go on and she catches up,” Poe muttered, meeting Ren’s eyes then glancing away. “You could tell if she was getting farther away, right?”

“Yes,” Ren admitted. “To a point.”

“This is some weird kind of space voodoo you two have got going on,” Poe said, quietly enough that Ren could pretend not to hear it if he wanted to, and he did. He wasn’t going to try to explain to the Rebel Leader the details of a connection he didn’t fully understand himself, nor did he think it would help even if he was in the mood for that conversation. At this point Poe had already seen enough of how they connected with his own two eyes that Ren hardly needed to add anything.

They continued forward, catching up to the main body of the Rebels until they had been reduced to plodding, step by step, in a single-file line. Everyone needed a break, everyone wanted some water, some food, Ren could feel it rising from them like mist on the surface of water, but no one said anything. And still the fissure went on. The slow pace would have been maddening enough in a wide open area, but in humid, cramped quarters like this it heightened Ren’s frustration until he could feel it preying on him like a living thing, wearing on his mind like acid as it broke down, piece by piece, his self-restraint. He was no stranger to the feeling but usually he dealt with it in the First Order, surrounded by his men, doing his job. Not in a situation like this.

“How much farther?” he muttered to Poe.

“Not that much,” Poe reassured him, and glancing over his shoulder Ren could see he had a scanner out, trying to track their progress forward. “Once we get into the main tunnels there’s a route that heads back up to the surface, so it’ll just be a hop and a skip until we’re breathing fresh air again.” He glanced up, measuring Ren with his eyes, and Ren turned to face front again. “How are you holding up?” Poe asked.

“I’m fine.”

Poe noticeably hesitated, then asked, “How’s she holding up?”

“She’s fine,” Ren said shortly.

“Her back?”

“Not as bad.”

“Good, that’s good,” Poe muttered, but the anxiety Ren could feel in him didn’t abate. “Could you tell if she was, you know, captured or something? Like, would you feel that?”

“I might feel her emotions,” Ren said in a short, grim voice, neither bothering to name the specific emotion nor bothering to tell Poe he could already feel her fear, thrumming through him at a steady, even keel, distant but clear. It wasn’t something he would want someone else to reveal if they were in his head, and he certainly wasn’t going to tell anyone that about her. It wasn’t just that it was private, frankly, but that it was his. He had a bond with Rey; no one else. He was allowed to be this close to her, and him only.

“I thought she might catch up by now,” Poe admitted in a very low voice. A leader showing his nerves, and to an enemy, too. To an arch enemy, to THE enemy. Ren growled deep in his throat, turning around, planting his feet and blocking the way with his body as he felt that compressed, concentrated frustration flaring, rearing up in his mind.

“Don’t tell me that,” he all but ordered Poe, glowering at him. “Don’t tell anyone that. You’re in charge around here, you don’t get to think things like that. She’s coming and that’s it. If she’s not, deal with it.”

“Something I can help you with, Ren?” Poe observed coolly, sitting a little back on his heels none the less, his hand drifting ever so slightly towards his blaster. “You’re the one with the direct line to her mind, you’re the one who can sense her across the galaxy. What, you expect me not to ask? You expect me just to carry on and pretend she’s not back there?”

“Yeah, I do,” Ren said. “And if we get to the upper tunnels and she’s still not here I expect you to carry on then, too. And if we get to the surface and she’s still not here, I expect you to get these people wherever your ships are and evacuate them before we track you down and blow every last scrap of the Rebellion to pieces!”

“And what, leave her to you?”

“The FORCE has left her to me,” Ren said, stepping forward, getting in Poe’s face. It should be unnecessary, considering the considerable difference in size, but something about the Rebel General’s odd potency made it necessary. “She ends up with me regardless. You don’t have a choice in that.”

“Yeah? Well she does.” Poe reminded him, crossing his arms across his chest and not retreating an inch. “And I’m going to make sure she gets that choice.” He paused for a second as if he expected Ren to respond but Ren had nothing more to say and for a moment they maintained their standoff, looking each other up and down. “Keep moving, Supreme Leader,” Poe finally said. “And if anything changes with Rey you let me know first, understand?”

“If I feel like it,” Ren shrugged, turning back around. He drew up short for a second as he looked down the tunnel and saw FN-2187 standing guard, his blaster drawn, pointing dead center at Ren’s chest. “You think that would have helped you?” Ren asked, torn between frustration and grim amusement. In answer FN-2187 let off a shot, just one, that Ren caught then threw to the wall, leaving a shower of sparks and a char mark. In the close environment of the fissure it didn’t echo, and from the lack of change in the emotional resonance of the Rebels that had gone farther up the tunnel Ren could tell they hadn’t heard.

“Meh, I might not be able to hit you but it makes me feel better,” FN-2187 said with a grin, holstering his weapon. “Who knows? Maybe someday I’ll catch you off guard.”

“Sure,” Ren agreed sarcastically.

“Finn,” Poe said, not so much a chastisement as a tired warning. Finn turned and carried on, but the self-satisfaction Ren felt emanating from him was irritating enough that Ren muttered, “Traitor,” at his back. Finn didn’t turn around, and his self-satisfaction only increased.

It wasn’t much longer before they heard exclamations of relief in front of them and felt the wash of cool air that signified the entrance to the regular tunnel system above. Ren could not have welcomed it more; every part of his uniform stuck closely to him, soaked in his sweat, and in his gloves his hands had become so slick he predicted his fingers would be pruning by the time he finally took them off. When it finally was his turn to climb up the last sloping wall of awkward, rough hand and footholds he all but breathed a grateful sigh as he emerged.

“The tunnel up to the surface should be a mile or so ahead of us, that way,” Poe said as he came up too, wiping off his jacket and gesturing eastward. “We’ll take three here, everyone have some water, catch your breath.” He turned back to the fissure, hands on his hips, frowning. “No chance anything’s changed?” he asked, looking at Ren.

“She’s closer,” Ren admitted, looking back into the fissure too. He’d been feeling it the last few minutes but hadn’t said anything, waiting to be sure. But now he was– because her fear was clearer, and her exhaustion, the sensation of her emotions down the bond becoming more choppy as though he could feel the physical rhythm of every panting breath.

“How much closer?” Poe asked, his tone spiking with hope, but Ren could only shrug. “Damn it,” Poe swore, shaking his head. “We were going to close off this end too, for when we were followed. The First Order will have definitely discovered the fissure by now, even if we didn’t come up on their long range scanners. Rey was going to collapse the tunnel here before we went on.”

“Of course she was,” Ren said in exasperation. “Do you have any plans that don’t rely wholly on her?”

“Hey, she’s our Force user, you’re theirs, it’s not starship science,” Poe shot back. “I don’t see you guys leaning one hundred percent on your droids and destroyers.”

“You know I’m not collapsing this tunnel,” Ren deadpanned. “There’s no chance I’m collapsing this tunnel.”

“We might not need you for that. We have blasters, a couple concussive grenades, if we need them.”

“She won’t be able to get back to you if you use them! You’ll trap her down there!”

“I know!” Poe snapped, then lowered his voice as the rest of the Rebels, who had been easing their way down the tunnel and politely pretending not to hear, couldn’t help but look back at him. “I’m just saying, you’re the one who was lecturing me about saving the people in front of me. Don’t go changing your tune now just because it’s not convenient anymore.”

“You try and collapse this tunnel, I’ll stop you,” Ren said, not bothering to lower his voice at all. “This is the best way through on every map you’ve got or you wouldn’t have picked it. This is the way she gets back.”

“I know, and I’m not going to do it,” Poe said. “But you gotta understand that’s the decision I’m making here, alright? That’s what I got to work with. So when she does catch up- and she’s going to- when she does catch up, I need to know that we get away even though I made this call.”

“I’m not bargaining for her,” Ren said grimly.

“No, just– just think of it as this being the choice,” Poe said. “Her choice. This is how she gets to make that. And we both want her to, okay, me and you, that’s the one thing we got going for us.”

“She’s going to choose me. Even if it’s not today, she will. What are you going to do then?”

“I don’t know,” Poe admitted, running a hand through his hair in a harsh, jerking movement, slicking it back with still-drying sweat. “I don’t even know if she will choose you or won’t. She’s a loyal person, but this–.” He glanced at Ren, looking him up and down, then shook his head and glanced away again.

“She’ll choose us,” FN-2187 assured him. He’d been hovering in the background the whole time, of course, listening in, and now he stepped up and clapped a hand on Poe’s shoulder. “She knows what’s at stake. Don’t start doubting her now.” 

“Yeah,” Poe said, but he didn’t sound convinced.

“Guys, I know you’re kind of having a summit or something but we’ve got heat signatures showing up on our scanners,” Rose said, pushing her way into their loose group, holding out a screen. “They shouldn’t be able to sense us on theirs yet but we should get moving if we want to make the surface before sundown.”

“Dammit, they’re quick,” Poe muttered, grabbing the scanner and measuring the distance with his eyes. “Alright people, let’s move! We’ve got some ground to cover.”

“I should stay here,” Ren said, hanging back. “She’ll come through here.”

“They’ll be waiting for us on the surface,” Poe said. “Scouts, at the bare minimum. We’ll need you up there.”

“I’m not here for what you need.”

“Yeah, well, if you want to be able to look Rey in the eye when she catches up I suggest you reconsider that,” Poe said, shouldering his pack. “Unless you’re hoping the first part of your reunion is going to be you explaining why you let all of her friends get shot down.”

“That’d be romantic,” FN-2187 said over Poe’s shoulder. Ren shot him a very dark look that he grinned at.

“I will not be manipulated by you.”

“Yeah?” Poe said, and this time he was the one who stepped forward, this time he was the one who got in Ren’s face. “No, that’s cool, buddy, that’s cool. But if you think for one second Rey’s going to go with you after you let everyone else she cares about get executed practically right in front of her, you don’t know her very well at all. My guess? At the very least you’re buying yourself years, decades, of trying to get her back. And at the worst, a whole new Rebellion. So you move out with us, or you stay here and try to come up with a good reason for why you didn’t.”

Damn him, he was right and he knew it. Ren could only stand there, trying to find a counterargument and knowing there wasn’t one, as Poe turned away, following the rest of the Rebels up the tunnel. It didn’t help that FN-2187 shot an incredibly smug look over his shoulder as he left, but strangely Rose biting her lip and looking back at Ren as though she hoped he would come- for purely emotional reasons with no basis in reality or logic- was somehow more irritating. Ren looked back at the fissure, reaching and reaching in his mind, wishing Rey would just appear in front of him and solve the whole situation right there. If he had her and it meant she’d leave with him he’d gladly let the Rebellion get away just this once. He’d seen their fighting strength and was not overly impressed. Poe appeared to be some kind of natural force of his own in human form, but the rest of them were dissolute, ragtag characters who wouldn’t go on much longer. Hearty, certainly, he’d give them that, but not about to outwit the First Order indefinitely. They’d be caught and punished another day.

Poe disappeared around the next corner, the sounds of the Rebels fading down the tunnel. Ren still stood by the mouth of the fissure, waiting and reaching. If only he could know for sure that’s where she was! But this entire planet was a rabbit’s warren of tunnels, hidden tracks, paths like this one that couldn’t be properly mapped. She could be further below them, or above on the surface, or in a tunnel farther west or farther east. All he could know was that she was nearby and she was gaining and she was tired and scared. What was he supposed to do with that?!

He looked after Poe again. He was right– if Rey did track Ren down and found out he’d condemned the Rebellion in her absence she’d storm off to some remote part of space and do he could only guess what. She’d be ready for their defeat some day, or at least she’d be ready to give them up in one form or another, but today was not that day and she’d make sure he bled for it. She had a dark streak in her that Ren was sure tended towards vengeance, to say nothing of being stubborn beyond all comparison.

In the end he followed the Rebels, gritting his teeth and running his saber hand down the hilt of his blade, lying in wait. How much longer, Rey, he asked in his thoughts, knowing she wasn’t close enough to hear. Hurry.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I also have a tumblr, which is where this all started. Lots of meta and reblogs and general nonsense. Do what you like with that information.
> 
> https://how-do-i-turn-this-thing-off.tumblr.com/


	8. Rey's final push

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sacrifice is something Rey and the Rebels almost fetishize, tbh. It's concerning.

Rey could feel Ren’s need for her, pulling her on. Not the aching, dangerous, bladed need of him in danger, nor the wild, raw, focused need of him hurt, but a sensation more like desire and longing, spiked so deeply with frustration it bled into her own mind the longer she held on to it. He must be with the Rebels; that was the only way he could still be ahead of her, the only reason she could continue down this route and the feeling of him would hold steady, guiding her on. She’d closed the gap, she knew, and widened the gap between herself and the stormtroopers by throwing some strategic loose debris in their way, but her connection to the Force was again weakening. She needed time, time to calm her breathing and her mind, to think, to eat or drink, to sleep– none of which would be forthcoming. She had to catch up to the Rebels. She had to.

If she didn’t… well, that was something she tried not to think about.

The fissure was rough and raw and went on forever but finally, finally, as her breathing became nearly as ragged as the fingertips she’d scraped on the rocks over and over again, she felt the first hint of cooler air. It made her cry with relief, exhaustion tears streaming down her face unchecked as she reached the last wall and climbed. She sent the feeling to Ben as strongly as she could, trying to send her thoughts as well- I’m coming I’m coming I’m coming- not sure if he’d get them but knowing by now she must be close enough for him to get the feeling of them.

The echoes of the oncoming stormtroopers were just behind her. She climbed faster, dragging herself out into the tunnel, first on her arms, then on her stomach, then rolling to her feet with what felt like the last ounce of extra strength she had. The plan originally was for her to collapse the tunnel here but that had assumed a fresh Rey, a Rey who had not been running and fighting and running and fighting on her own, left behind, cut off from the rest of her friends. And Ben. Cut off from Ben.

He was ahead. He was with the Rebels. And if she didn’t stop the stormtroopers now, here, before they caught the Rebel’s scent, they’d all be doomed.

There was a crack in the ceiling, deep in the rock, a thin fissure no wider than a hair, driven along the tunnel but not big enough to cause a cave in without extreme pressure from within, pushing it out with a wedge of Force strength that would have tired her at her best. But she had to.

Ben, she thought, gritting her teeth, raising her hands as below her the stormtroopers found the end of the fissure. She was out of sight for now but soon they’d begin to climb. Ben, she thought again. Help me. She couldn’t send the words but she could send the feeling, and no words came in answer but there was a new tendril of worry from his end of the bond, and suspicion. If he was here he’d be telling her not to, and that made her smile. Of course he would. He always insisted on a mantra of putting yourself first even though he’d gladly tell her to risk him any time if she might get hurt instead.

He didn’t see that in himself. There was something in him that wouldn’t let him, that didn’t want to. But she saw it all the time.

“Breathe,” he would tell her. Padawan first forms. “Reach out,” Luke would say. “It’s not all lifting rocks.”

No. Sometimes it was breaking them. So she shoved the very, very last of her will into the fissure, up into that crack even a hair could not have fit in, and Pushed.

The rock responded. It cracked. Below the stormtroopers shouted in alarm, but they’d seen her. If they got off a shot–.

Her vision flickered. No. NO, she wouldn’t let it. She held on, pushing, pushing. The rock cracked, and crumbled, and that last thing she saw as the world tilted and the floor gave underneath her was a wall of earth coming crashing down.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In case you've somehow missed that I have a tumblr...
> 
> https://how-do-i-turn-this-thing-off.tumblr.com/


	9. Ren and Finn turn back

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ren and Finn decide to separate from the rest of the Rebels and risk going back to try and save Rey

It sent Ren to his knees when he felt it, the tidal wave of her strength and the emptiness at the end as it washed away, the sudden black, drifting weightlessness as oblivion rushed the bond and doused every other feeling, a cold snap in his mind, frigid and cruel. How long since he’d been alone with his own thoughts? Even in her sleep, even dreaming, she sent him her feelings, a tangle of emotions she’d never tried to sort out, never bothered to suppress or control, always at the edge of his mind. Now that snapped away and he was left with his own emptiness inside him, that arid and desolate place that didn’t mean anything, didn’t feel anything, the moment she wasn’t there at least at the borders, giving him something to hold on to.

He’d caught up to the Rebels by then and when it hit FN-2187 was nearest, and when he went down FN-2187 caught him. Caught him. Never mind that he almost collapsed under Ren’s weight. That was what united these Rebels, Ren thought distantly. They were all so much smaller than him, and all convinced they could stand up to him anyway.

Rey was also. Rey was both of those things. No wonder she thought she fit in so well here.

“It’s Rey!” FN-2187 shouted to Poe, who was at Ren’s side in half an instant, Rose still beating him to it, grabbing Ren’s hand in hers.

“What’s happened?” Poe demanded.

“She-she blacked out,” Ren panted, squeezing his eyes shut, trying to throw himself at her in his mind but it was useless. Worthless. There was only empty, starless space where she had been. “She used too much of the Force. It overwhelmed her.”

“The tunnel,” Poe said in a revelatory tone, his expression terrible. “She was supposed to collapse the tunnel once she got out of the fissure. But not now! I never thought she’d do it.”

“I don’t know if she did,” Ren mumbled, “but she tried.”

“How bad is it?” FN-2187 asked, still holding him up. Ren pushed him away and dropped Rose’s hand, staggering slightly before he got his balance back.

“It’s bad,” he said shortly. “Not like when she was injured, but bad. I’m going back.”

“I’ll go with you,” FN-2187 instantly volunteered, drawing his blaster.

“No.”

“I’m not giving you a choice,” FN-2187 said. “She’s my friend. I’m going with you.”

“Me too,” Rose said.

“No, I need you here,” Poe told her before either Ren or FN-2187 could shoot down the idea– and Ren suspected they’d both been about to. “We’ll be on the surface in less than an hour, I need you checking the packs and making sure the magnet plates are working or we’ll be blown to pieces the moment we come onto their scanners. Bring her back,” he ordered them, making eye contact with FN-2187 then looking directly at Ren and adding, “bring her back here. To us.” Ren didn’t bother responding, turning away and heading down the tunnel.

“Be careful,” Rose said to FN-2187, then called, “both of you!” after Ren. He didn’t respond to her either. The empty place in his mind where Rey should have been yawned at him like a black hole, and every emotion he shoved at it, every thought he tried to push through it, disappeared into the nothingness without so much as an echo.

FN-2187 was, thankfully, silent as they went back the way they’d come. It hadn’t been that long but it felt long, it felt like a tunnel without end. Without Rey in his mind Ren couldn’t tell how far or close she was; he had to go on line of sight, which was maddening, and when they finally rounded a corner and were met with a cloud of fresh dust he was almost relieved.

“Cave-in,” FN-2187 muttered, barely loudly enough for Ren to hear him, automatically taking up a support position at his left shoulder instead of his right in case he needed his saber hand free. “Rey?”

“Yes,” Ren muttered back. There was latent Force energy here, overwhelmed with a cloying exhaustion that felt like her. Not in his head, though– this was something he was feeling in the physical Force. “Slowly,” he added, though FN-2187 would hardly need the reminder. He, unlike literally everyone else in the entire Rebellion outfit, had been properly trained.

The dust was thick and cut off any attempt to shine a light through it. Ren had to rely on his Force sight and FN-2187 had to rely on Ren. They went forward step by step until Ren found a rock, then another, then the remnants of a massive cave-in right about where the exit of the fissure would have been. “She didn’t,” he breathed, throwing his senses wide. The other life forms in this area were distant, probably blocked by the rubble. “We’re alone,” he told FN-2187, raising his voice back to a normal volume.

“Rey?” Finn asked, fear rolling off him in waves.

“I don’t know,” Ren said shortly, turning left, then right. There was an- an oddness there, a kind of hole that wasn’t a hole, a disruption in the flow of things as if one part of the room had simply fallen away. He recognized it because it was the exact same feeling as the hole in his mind. He moved toward it, step by step, until the toe of his boot brushed something soft. “Here,” he told FN-2187, calling his saber to his hand and firing the blade. The harsh, crackling red light was enough to burn away the dust and darkness to reveal Rey’s silhouette, lying on her side facing away from them, unhurt to the naked eye but unmoving.

“Rey,” FN-2187 breathed, holstering his blaster and kneeling over her, taking her pulse. “She’s alive,” he reported, grabbing her arms. “Help me get her on my back.”

“On your back?” Ren asked, stressing the ‘your’ scornfully.

“Look, one of us can shoot and one of us can cut through anything in his path. And even with her on my back, I can still shoot.” Ren shrugged and held out a hand, gently lifting her in the air enough that FN-2187 could get under her, holding her legs at his waist so that her upper body was draped over his, arms over his shoulders, head hanging to one side. Ren reached out while FN-2187 was adjusting her weight, distracted, and brushed the very tips of his gloved fingers across her shoulder. There. Faint, and barely, but there. The feeling of her, as distant as the farthest star, but unmistakable.

“She exhausted herself far, far too much,” he muttered, drawing his hand back. “She has to rest.”

“Well she can get plenty of rest on the Falcon,” FN-2187 said, hoisting her and setting his feet. “Let’s go.”

Ren nodded, retreating back up the tunnel with FN-2187 right behind him, leaving his saber burning so they could see their way forward, even once they’d gotten past the dust. He needed the light to see so he could save his Force senses for tracking the Rebels ahead of them and monitoring Rey. He still couldn’t feel her in his mind properly, just a shadow that wasn’t his, a hovering lack of what should be there and had gone.

“This is what you do to her,” he muttered, not turning around but knowing FN-2187 could hear him. “She’s so drained she hardly has any feeling in the Force at all.”

“Any of us would die for our cause,” FN-2187 muttered back.

“But she’ll die first. You know she will. She nearly has three or four times today, but she has no sense of self-preservation anymore while her precious Rebels might be in danger.”

“She sounds a lot like you,” FN-2187 said, and Ren stopped, looking back at him. “What?” he asked, bowed over under Rey’s weight but still able to look Ren in the eye. “You’re saying you wouldn’t die for her?”

“That’s not what we’re talking about.”

“No, right, we’re talking about taking crazy risks and using so much Force power you knock yourself out, now where have I seen that before?”

“It’s not the same,” Ren snapped, turning away and continuing up the tunnel.

“No, it’s not,” FN-2187 agreed, following. “She’s devoted to a cause, she wants something bigger than herself, and not just for her but for everyone. You just want something for you.”

“Do you ever stop talking?”

“Do you ever listen?” Ren chose not to respond to that, tightening his grip on the hilt of his saber but keeping his back to FN-2187, though he was beginning to think it wouldn’t do much to stop him. He was right. “Rey wants to be here,” FN-2187 continued, undeterred. “And she wants you to be here with her, even though the rest of us don’t. Like, at all.” Ren snorted, rolling his eyes at the murky darkness in front of him. “But we listened to her when she said you could come back. Hell, we even let you in to help her when she was hurt, even though there was a good chance you’d just take her and turn on us. She’d die for us and we’d die for her, and you can’t pretend you don’t understand that because you’d die for her too.”

“But I wouldn’t ask her to die for me,” Ren pointed out.

“Solo, if she really wanted to–,” FN-2187 broke off, groaning slightly as he stopped and adjusted Rey on his back. “If she really wanted to,” he continued when he was done, “even you wouldn’t be able to stop her.” Ren said nothing to that and at last FN-2187 chose to stay silent, or else he was finally too out of breath from carrying Rey to try and talk anymore.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My tumblr:
> 
> https://how-do-i-turn-this-thing-off.tumblr.com/


	10. Ren and Finn and unlikely rescues

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ren and Finn try to return to the Rebels with an unconscious Rey, only to find the Rebels are dealing with problems of their own

The tunnel ended in a steep climb to the surface and there FN-2187 finally had to admit defeat, handing Rey over to Ren and letting Ren climb up first while he covered them from behind. It was slow going; Ren had Rey on his back the same way FN-2187 had but the slope was too steep to climb without using at least one of his hands. Every movement had to be carefully balanced and more than once he had to use the Force to keep her in place. It didn’t tire him too much- she wasn’t that heavy, even unconscious- and he was encouraged by the stronger presence of her in his mind when she was so close to him physically. Emotions were starting to bleed through again, watery gray, bleak feelings of exhaustion and fear, but they reeked of her and it was enough.

He was nearly to the opening that led to the surface when a whispered warning from FN-2187 made him pause, looking up. He’d been too focused on what he was doing to expand his senses in front of him but now that he was still he could hear distant blaster fire from up ahead.

“Stormtroopers,” FN-2187 whispered, crawling up next to him. “Any behind us?”

“No,” Ren whispered back, stretching his mind into the tunnel they’d nearly managed to leave behind just a moment before. It was silent, and had been since Rey’s cave-in.

“Maybe we should stay here,” FN-2187 suggested, looking between Rey and the light up above, his expression torn but the hand on his holstered blaster steady. “Catch them up later.”

“I’m getting really tired of catching people up later.”

“Yeah, but we can’t fight and protect Rey at the same time.” FN-2187 looked at her, his calculating and impersonal study making Ren bristle nonetheless. “Unless we can find somewhere to hide her. Can you tell if there’s any cover, anything between us and their line of sight?”

“I’m not a scanner,” Ren growled.

“Well then you need to come up with something to do, muscle brains, because I’m out of options!”

“'Muscle brains’?!”

“You’re the Supreme Leader of the First Order, don’t they teach you strategy or tactics, or– or something?!”

“Strategy’s a little different when you’re maneuvering the largest fleet of Star Destroyers ever seen, and the last time I checked pretty much every plan the Rebellion has relies on an intergalactic disgrace of a half-rotted smuggling ship and my father’s pet carpet!”

“Hey! Careful what you say about Chewie, he’s my friend,” FN-2187 warned, hoisting his blaster and looking up towards the opening. “It sounds like the blaster fire has died down a little, can you sense anything at all?”

“I sense that going out there without a plan is still a really bad idea,” Ren said sarcastically.

“Yeah, well really bad ideas are all we’ve got, so if it’s the least really bad idea then it looks like that’s what we have to do.”

“You’re an idiot,” Ren snapped but FN-2187 was already moving ahead of him, scrambling up the last few feet of the slope and into the unknown. There was a moment of silence then his head and shoulders came back into view.

“I think we’ve got an opening,” he said, reaching down with both arms. “Hand her up.” Ren hesitated, physically leaning back as he considered, and FN-2187 growled, “Before the mass of angry First Order troops comes swarming back, please.”

“Don’t drop her,” Ren warned, transferring her from his back to his arms with another Force push.

“I won’t.”

“Watch her head.”

“I know!” FN-2187, hugging her to his chest and dragging her away by the simple expedient of rolling back into the open air, Ren scrambling after them. The opening was behind a curve in the earth, a small natural mound, overgrown and well-hidden from above and in front. FN-2187 sprawled on the ground with Rey on top of him, their legs tangled together, but before Ren could do anything about it blaster fire rang out again, very close by, and he crouched instinctively in the cover of their small shelter, looking up.

“Speeders,” FN-2187 hissed, still under Rey.

“Get up,” Ren snapped, calling his saber hilt to his hand but not firing it. For now they were still hidden, but no matter how he stretched his senses he could only feel that they weren’t alone but not the specifics of who was around them.

“What’s the play?” FN-2187 asked, finally on his feet and crouching behind Ren, tucking Rey further into the shadow of the undergrowth.

“You stay here,” Ren said. “Watch her. I’ll figure out where they are and see if I can’t find a way through.”

“What do I do if you don’t come back?”

“If they kill me you’re definitely going to die.”

“Gee, thanks,” FN-2187 hissed as Ren left the shelter, dodging into the nearest shadow, which happened to be cast by the wide trunk of the native vegetation. The canopy overhead was comprised of broad triangular leaves each the size of a surface troop carrier, letting in sunlight only sporadically and suffusing everything below in a greenish gloom. Directly beneath the canopy two First Order speeders circled in a searching pattern, and on the ground a thick layer of vines and hillocks created a shallow maze populated in places by the bodies of fighters from both sides.

Ren concentrated, trying to pick up on a specific feeling somewhere around him that would signal where the Rebels had gone. He’d been hoping for Poe but couldn’t immediately find him; Rose, however, was somewhere in the vegetation to his right, though when he looked that direction he couldn’t see her.

More blaster fire was exchanged. A Rebel head popped up and was instantly shot, a charred black hole appearing in the helmet. The feeling of Rose held steady, so it hadn’t been her. Wherever the Rebels were they were clearly pinned down and the speeders turned that direction, the helmeted stormtroopers scanning visibly as the magnet plates continued to confuse their instruments. They stopped dead, however, when Ren straightened up and stepped out from the shelter of the trunk.

“Supreme Leader?!” the one nearest exclaimed, expressing as much surprise as his mask filters would allow.

“Lower your weapons,” Ren said coldly.

“But sir! The Rebel forces–!” That was as far as he got before Ren gestured, throwing him off his speeder. The craft wobbled uncertainly for a moment before its nose tilted downwards and it began its descent, straight towards Ren. He deflected it to one side unceremoniously, even though it took a little more Force strength than he would have liked to expend at the moment. He wasn’t exhausted by any means but he’d stretched himself significantly by pushing his senses for as long as he had. Still, the demonstration made the other stormtroopers hesitate, both the one on the speeder and the ground troops, though neither had stopped advancing.

“I told you to lower your weapons,” Ren repeated, a strange and uneasy feeling of uncertainty rising in the back of his mind that he responded to by firing his lightsaber, letting the familiar blade remind them exactly who they were approaching and what the response would be to disobedience. “Now.”

“Forgive us, Supreme Leader,” their captain said, shouldering his way forward among the ground troops. “We have orders to be on our guard against you, sir. Reports are that you’ve been taken hostage.”

“Do I look like a hostage?”

“No, sir,” the captain replied, but still did not lower his blaster.

“So. General Hux’s orders outweigh my own.”

The captain visibly hesitated, the other stormtroopers stumbling to a halt as well, their formation constricting tighter than the standard form as they all tried to edge subtly behind him. “Please lower your weapon, sir,” the captain said.

“I will not,” Ren replied, lifting it a fraction instead.

“Please align yourself with the First Order formation, sir,” the captain tried in a slightly more plaintive tone.

“No,” Ren flatly refused. “I said already that if the First Order advanced without my direct authority I would cut down anyone who disobeyed me.”

The captain conferred with his lieutenant for a moment before shaking his head. “We received no such order, Supreme Leader.”

“You have just heard me say it,” Ren told him, but something was wrong, very very wrong. The stormtroopers still had not stood down, and when the captain replied it was only after a long pause with his helmet tilted slightly to one side, as though listening to something over his headset that Ren couldn’t hear.

“I’m sorry, sir,” the stormtrooper said, raising his blaster to sight down the barrel. “I can’t accept that order.”

“Fine,” Ren said, gesturing. The trunk next to them jerked, then swayed, and just as the stormtroopers turned to look it uprooted itself and toppled toward them, the massive leaf on the other end scything down out of the general canopy, opening a hole in the gloom that blinded the stormtrooper on the speeder, who reflexively raised his arm to shield his eyes. Ren threw his lightsaber, the Force guiding it higher than it should have gone, and it sliced through the stormtrooper’s helmet and returned to his hand just as the ground forces managed to clamber over the fallen trunk and begin firing on him.

His saber was a blur, his mind blank as he let the Force take over completely, guiding his hands. It helped that they were all coming from the same direction, though now they were beginning to correct that error, spreading out to flank him. He couldn’t move fast enough to deflect everything and also direct the bolts back towards them and had to settle for sending the shots wide, which protected him but didn’t do anything to thin their ranks.

A second volley of blaster fire came from his right and he was halfway through turning that direction when he realized it was the Rebels firing in his defense, aiming for the unprotected sides of the stormtroopers that had completely forgotten about them. It divided their attention and the brief reprieve allowed Ren to aim a couple of his deflections better, taking out the two stormtroopers that were closest.

“Ben!” a familiar voice exclaimed behind him, and he took two steps back to be able to look down where Rey was leaning out from the shelter of the vegetation, her forehead beaded with sweat, her eyes dark with exhaustion.

“Stay under cover!” he ordered, feeling for her in the Force. She was still so weak, it was amazing she was conscious at all. FN-2187 appeared over her shoulder, trying to drag her back, and for a moment Ren thought she would let him but it was only a feint as she grabbed his blaster out of his hand and faced forward again, getting off two shots. Ren felt the shallow ripple in the Force as she tried to use it to improve her aim but even that was too much for her and she went slack again, slumping to the ground with the blaster limp in her hand.

“Pull her back,” Ren ordered FN-2187 as he continued his own retreat, unable to keep the exasperation out of his voice. She’d woken up only to get off a couple shots and knock herself out again? Was this woman driven purely by stubbornness or was it just her absolute disregard for her own well-being that made her do such stupid things? “I think we can head to the right once these are taken care of,” Ren said, ducking back into the shadows and lowering his saber as the stormtroopers exchanged a volley with the Rebels, distracted for the moment. “We’ll have to move quickly to get ahead of the reinforcements. How far away is the Falcon?” FN-2187 visibly hesitated and Ren felt his ire rise. “Now would be a really good time for me to know how far I have to get her while she’s still like this,” he snapped, jerking his head towards Rey.

“Far,” FN-2187 admitted, making his decision. “More than a day away. Poe wanted them to keep their distance in case we were discovered.”

“That’s a lot of distance,” Ren said, glancing back at the battle. Most of the stormtroopers had been killed and the Rebels were starting to poke their heads out again, their lines becoming visible as they advanced.

“The plan was to send up a beacon and have the Falcon come find us. That was assuming we didn’t have the entire First Order on our tails.”

“You do,” Ren said shortly, turning off his saber and sheathing it at his side as the last stormtrooper went down. “Are you carrying her or am I?”

“I will,” FN-2187 decided, acknowledging the civility of the offer with the barest twitch of his eyebrows, there and then gone again. “Keep that lightsaber handy.” Ren nodded, helping him pick her up. She was warm and solid and once again completely, totally knocked out.

“Ben! Finn! Guys!” Poe shouted, coming tearing around the corner and catching sight of Rey. “You got her?”

“She’s out cold but she’s fine,” Finn assured him, stepping forward so he took up what was becoming his usual defensive position at Ren’s left shoulder. “Looks like you guys ran into some trouble.”

“Yeah, not much, not much,” Poe said, tracking the movement with his eyes. “Would have been worse if you hadn’t come along, hey? But just in the nick of time, that’s the way we like it.”

“Your position is known, General,” Ren reminded him humorlessly. “We should move out now.”

“Yeah. Yeah, I guess,” Poe said, giving him one more searching look nonetheless. “Falcon should be somewhere around here.” He turned and trotted away, calling for a sound-off among his people.

“Guess you’re coming with us?” FN-2187 asked Ren.

“For now,” he said, stepping away before he had to answer any more questions. The defiance of the stormtroopers was deeply troubling but he resolved not to show it. For now it was better to stay ahead of the First Order and decide what he would have to do. It was doubtful whether Hux had meant to foment any serious rebellion against him- he hadn’t been feeling any more vengeful or traitorous than usual in recent days- but he may well decide to jump at this opportunity and run with it. If he dared show his face himself it might be time for Ren to finally put that rabid cur down.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Any time you put Ren and Finn together it gets interesting because they're not at all friends- like, AT ALL- but they're not completely enemies, either. And that makes it fun to write, which means you get more chapters more quickly, dear readers :)
> 
> My Tumblr, you know the drill:
> 
> https://how-do-i-turn-this-thing-off.tumblr.com/


	11. Ren, the Rebels, and survival

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Forced to stay with the Rebels, Ren tries to navigate taking care of Rey and the general distrust of those around him

They camped under the canopy in their circled magnet plating, confident that between the thick leaves up above and their own projected interference down below they were safe enough to get at least a few hours' sleep while the First Order ships crisscrossed the planet’s surface, their lights strobing over the leaves but rarely finding an opening to shine all the way down to the vegetation below. Ren sat next to Rose with Rey between them, curled up loosely on the forest floor, a blanket over her. The first moment the Rebels had deemed it safe enough to stop for a break on their headlong flight into the safety and anonymity of a vaguely easterly direction Ren had dug out a med pack and found the dosage of heavy anesthetic usually reserved for field dressing a serious injury. He’d given Rey the whole thing, ignoring the disapproving stares of the nearby medics, but no one had tried to stop him and now he could be absolutely sure she would sleep long enough to recover, with no risk she’d wake up early and knock herself out again. Since then he’d spared at least a portion of his Force senses at all times to monitor her heartbeat, just in case the dose had been too much for her, but so far so good. Still, it was a necessary precaution; she was very small.

“She seems like she’s doing well,” Rose commented, noticing as Ren distractedly readjusted the blanket to cover more of the bare skin along her arms.

“She should be fine by tomorrow,” Ren said, not adding that it would probably still be a couple days past that before she was back to full strength. The level of exhaustion she’d somehow attained while performing ridiculous heroics that no one expected of her was no joke.

“So are you going to stay with us now?” Rose asked, almost sounding hopeful.

“No,” Ren said shortly, going back to his rations.

“Oh. I just thought, after what happened–.”

“Just a traitorous General I might have to kill. Not a problem.”

“Oh,” she said again, sounding deflated. “Right. That’s too bad, you’re really strong. The way you used your lightsaber against all of them at once, I’ve never seen even Rey- but I mean, her lightsaber got broken, so- but it was cool! It was really cool.”

Ren had no idea what she could have expected him to say to that but she was looking at him as though she expected something so he shrugged. “Thank you,” he mumbled.

“I wish I had been born with the Force,” Rose said, going back to staring into the fire. “My sister and I were mine slaves. Hardly even saw the sun, before we ran away. But if I could have used the Force I would have just–!” She made a sudden, sharp downward motion with both hands, palms flat like she was pushing, narrating with a rumbling sound. “Caved in the whole place!” she clarified, in case Ren wasn’t sure. “Then it wouldn’t have been just me and my sister who got away. I always thought that once we won the war we could go back and get the rest of them. But now I guess it will just be me.”

“'Once we won the war’?” Ren couldn’t help but repeat, even though immediately two of the other Rebels sitting within hearing distance shot him threatening glares.

“Everything ends,” Rose said blithely, either ignoring his tactlessness or somehow wholly unaware of it. “Even war. What are you going to do when the war’s over?”

“I don’t know,” Ren said, reflexively glancing down at Rey.

“Me too,” Rose said with a smile, glancing meaningfully between him and Rey then looking over at another part of the camp. Ren tracked her gaze and found FN-2187 sitting with Poe and what he could only assume were the other high ranking members of the Rebellion, talking strategy. “I hope he wants to, though,” Rose added. “He’s kind of hard to read.” She turned toward Ren with a suddenly cold and merciless expression. “If you try to kill him again I’m going to kill you. And I can do it, you know. Even your sword isn’t invincible.”

Ren stared at her, momentarily lost for words as she glared up at him from a sharp angle, easily a foot shorter than he was if not more. “It’s a lightsaber,” he finally pointed out.

“Whatever,” she sniffed, looking away and poking at the fire. “I bet if I stick it in a plasma-fired kiln I can still melt it.”

“Probably.”

“Good,” she said, smiling again as though something had been decided between them. “Got any extra bean loaf? I want to see if the coals are hot enough to toast it.”

“No.”

“I’ll check the other bags,” she said, getting to her feet. “See if you can get Rey to drink some water, I bet she’s thirsty.” She left on her errand and he stared after her for a long moment, nonplussed not so much by the threat but by the absolute conviction behind it. Where did the Rebellion find these people? Then again he supposed at least a certain amount of scintillating mental imbalance was required of anyone willing to deliberately throw their lot in with this suicidal enterprise. It was, however, no reason to ignore her advice on Rey’s account and he eventually did as he was told, propping Rey up against his shoulder and carefully pouring a little water into her mouth, stroking her throat to trigger her swallow reflex. It was a tricky operation and he got about as much water on his shoulder as he did in her, but with a little patience he made her drink enough to keep her safely hydrated.

There was so much about this one small service that was strange, he thought, carefully screwing the cap back onto the canteen one-handed so he wouldn’t have to put her down just yet. It was a feeling that seemed to be magnified now that they were alone, or else it came to the fore in the absence of other concerns. Her weight against him was strange; the easy, calm rhythm of her breathing was strange; the simple relief of having done something for her was strange. She was helpless at the moment, completely dependent on him, and it put a weight on his shoulders that for once was neither unwelcome nor unpleasant. In fact he felt something that was very like… pride. Not the hard, grim pride he was used to, of power and strength, but something kinder, gentler. Even here, in the midst of all her friends, people who hated and despised him and probably dreamt of killing him when they went to sleep at night, he had earned the right to hold her like this, help her like this, care for her like this. He had earned that. Even they knew he had earned that. And Rey. He laid her down again on the threadbare blanket that was the only shelter the Rebels had from the forest floor, wrapping it over her carefully in case the morning was cold. Rey, when she woke up, would think he’d earned it too.

It was a sensation so foreign as to be almost uncomfortable and Ren meditated on it as he sat back on his heels, staring into the fire. He’d never been entrusted with the care of something before. Oh, he was nominally the head of the largest military force in the history of the galaxy, but that was a very different burden, and one he’d never anticipated receiving. Truth be told, he hadn’t really thought through what the universe would be like when Snoke wasn’t in it. When he’d killed his master it had been a reaction to a threat, not some kind of bid for power of his own. That’s all he ever did, really; pushed back against anything he thought he was in danger from, things trying to wound him, things trying to kill him. Luke, Rey, Snoke, the merciless scourge that was the Light side of the Force. He lashed out and destroyed whatever was there at the time. He generally couldn’t dredge up any regret for that, except in Rey’s case; the first moment he’d raised his lightsaber to her he’d been in serious danger, though he didn’t know it, of accidentally cutting down the only thing of value in the whole universe. But now, somehow, he found himself caring for that one infinitely precious thing, and he felt with a completely unanticipated certainty how much more that meant to him than he could have ever imagined. Not a weight on his shoulders so much as a mantle, a responsibility that was an honor rather than a punishment. And he was proud to wear it, while it lasted. He was proud to be someone who could be trusted with this.

The group of leaders broke up and he felt rather than saw Poe heading toward him, picking his way through the other fires, stopping here and there to offer a kind word, a clap on the shoulder. He gave a good show of easy camaraderie but Ren knew very well the shadow across his eyes, the tightness in his hands and calves. He knew where the strain of command could be hidden when you didn’t want others to see it, and Poe was under tremendous strain. By the time Poe reached Ren’s fire Ren had already stood to his feet, waiting for him.

“What do you want me to call you?” Poe asked without preamble, shoving his hands in his pockets as he looked Ren over. “Are we still going formal, Supreme Leader? You got a nickname? Just Supreme? Just Leader?”

“Ren is fine,” Ren said, knowing what Poe was really asking and ignoring it.

“Hm,” Poe said, not looking surprised. “Well, Ren, let’s take a walk. Get to know each other properly.”

“You need any company, General?” one of the Rebels in earshot asked, a tanned, grizzled fighter everyone called Sergeant rising to his feet behind Poe.

“We’re good,” Poe said, not looking around. “We got enough plating laid out that they won’t see us from the ground, and the canopy’s fouling up whatever they’ve got in orbit. We get to sleep nice and cozy tonight.”

Ren was fairly certain that wasn’t what Sergeant had meant but Poe was already moving off by then, slanting right and heading around the fire and into the murky gloom beyond the camp’s edge, where Rebel patrols kept silent watch somewhere in the darkness. Ren hesitated, glancing over his shoulder to see Rose and FN-2187 were making their way back to Rey, talking quietly, Rose gesturing about something with a tool held in one hand. Rey wouldn’t be left alone for even a moment. With that reassurance he followed Poe, past wherever their pickets were set, into the forest until the camp was just a spot of light in the distance, all but invisible unless you knew where to look for it.

“I’d almost think you have something unpleasant planned for me, General,” Ren said when they finally stopped next to a remote patch of starlight, highlighting the vegetation around them with a watery sheen.

“Yeah, I can see how you’d have trust issues given how the day’s gone so far,” Poe said, crossing his arms over his chest as he looked Ren over. “So, what’s the play?”

“I’m not sure what you mean.”

“First Order’s not yours anymore. Not sure if you noticed.”

“One of my Generals has decided ambition is worth more than keeping his head on his shoulders. He’s mistaken but we have other, equally competent officers who can replace him,” Ren said evenly. This was about where he’d thought the conversation was going, but he’d been too focused on Rey to spare much thought yet for how he was going to bring the First Order back to heel.

Poe studied him in the semi-darkness, expression unreadable. “Ren, I’ve been talking a few things over with the others. Rey nearly getting killed. You saving her. Us nearly getting killed. You saving us.” 

“A charitable perspective.”

“Yeah, Finn had a lot to say about that. How is she?”

“She’s fine,” Ren replied, the mantle close about him again, sharpening his response.

“Medics said you put her under pretty good.” 

“She needs to recover. She can’t keep–.”

“I know, I know,” Poe said, raising his hands. “I didn’t ask to argue with you about it. Just wanted to know when she’s going to wake up.”

“Tomorrow,” Ren said firmly, standing his ground. “Late tomorrow, depending on how long I can keep her under once the drugs wear off.”

“Dammit,” Poe muttered, dropping his eyes to the forest floor, his tension showing much more clearly now that they weren’t in view of the others. “That puts me in a bind, Ren. You know that puts me in a bind.” Ren had nothing to say to that and Poe sighed, hard. “We’re moving out an hour before dawn,” he told Ren. “We’ve arranged a rendezvous with the Falcon but it’s going to be tight. Or at least it would have been tight, assuming Rey was going to be up and around by then. Now it’s going to be pretty damn impossible.”

“So adjust your plans.” 

“I have. Or at least, I think I have.” He looked at Ren, squaring up to him. “How is Rey?”

“She’s not waking up until tomorrow, General,” Ren said grimly, unimpressed.

“But how is she, still?” Poe asked. “What happened today?” 

“Which part?”

“When you brought her back from the tunnels,” Poe said without missing a beat. “Finn said you told him she’d exhausted herself in the Force, that you couldn’t even see her properly when you were right on top of her.”

“That’s what I said,” Ren growled, feeling his own strain tightening in his hips, in the muscles along his spine.

“What does that mean?”

Ren took a breath for a moment, centering himself as he frowned at the tangle of vegetation both living and dead that made up the forest floor under his feet. One of the giant leaves had fallen who knew how long ago, wilting away until it was brown and brittle, crumbling to particles and dust. “I’m not sure what happened,” he said in a much more even tone, studying the leaf, the intricate lattice of its shriveled vessels, still holding pieces of it together. “She drew too hard on the living Force inside her, like draining a lake. For a moment the lake disappeared altogether.”

“Okay,” Poe said slowly, clearly trying to keep his own frustration out of his voice. “Okay, I think I kind of get that. But what does that mean for her, Ren? Did she…” he hesitated a long moment, as though hoping Ren would fill in what he meant, but Ren only looked up, watching him. “Did she die?” Poe finally asked, voice flat with either fear or guilt, Ren couldn’t tell which.

“No.”

Poe nodded, once, sharply, and some of his tension seemed to ease. “I thought– Rey said the Force was life, like, some sort of connection to life itself. So I thought, if that was gone–.”

“She didn’t die,” Ren snapped, feeling the possibility of it like an unpleasant swooping sensation in his chest, like the ground giving way. “I could feel that she didn’t.”

“Well why not?” Poe demanded, now equally nettled. “You said she drew too hard on the Force, you said she disappeared altogether. What’s that mean?”

“It means you pushed her too hard,” Ren said flatly, not bothering to protest again that he didn’t know. “And now she’s not waking up until tomorrow.”

They stood in strained silence, each of them squared up to the other, the air around them feeling heated and tense. “I got a lot of people counting on me,” Poe said at last. “You pointed it out yourself. And more than just the ones here, I got a whole galaxy to fight for. So I’ve made a decision. A decision not a lot of people agree with, but it’s what we need to do.” He paused for a moment, not to wait for Ren to say something this time but to turn away from him, pacing the edge of the starlight for a couple steps. “I got an offer for you,” he said, looking up through the hole in the canopy, watching the distant stars. For a moment a First Order ship glided past, it’s lights passing across the canopy, but it didn’t spot them and in only a few seconds it had moved on. Ren felt rather than heard Poe and himself letting out the breath they’d each been holding at the exact same time.

“I don’t care about your offers. There’s nothing you have that I want,” Ren said once the coast was clear again, speaking a little more softly than he had just before.

Poe glanced at him and for a moment Ren could tell they wondered the exact same thing– would he insist that he had Rey? But then Poe shrugged. “Maybe not. But I’ve been thinking about our problems and they look pretty damn similar to me.”

“'Our’ problems.”

“You got an army you’re not in charge of anymore, a big one,” Poe reminded him, gesturing upwards. “You got a General who looks like he’s leaning towards a coup, if he’s not there already. And even if it’s just one guy that seems like a problem to me.”

“You’re mistaken.”

“Your own troops fired on you today,” Poe said, and something in his voice had changed, becoming stiffer and more formal, that strange innate power he had about him suddenly palpable. “You’re trapped on the surface of a planet that’s not looking too friendly toward you at the moment, and while your rogue General controls the space above you you’re not going to have much room to counter whatever he’s doing.”

Ren studied him for a moment, weighing the feel of him, both in the Force and in the man himself. “I’m listening,” he finally said.

“You need off this rock. We need off this rock. You want Rey to stay out of it– so do I. Don’t think I like risking her, anymore than I like putting any of my men in danger. What happened to her today shouldn’t have happened, but it went how it went. What I’m suggesting now is that we can work it out so that we all get what we want.”

“I take her place,” Ren summed up, seeing where this was going.

“You get us to the Falcon, we get you out of here. Once we’re off First Order radar I’ll give you passage wherever you want to go.”

“Don’t promise things that aren’t in your power to give, General.”

“Wherever you want to go,” Poe repeated, not a trace of hesitation in his expression or tone. “You want to get to the other side of the galaxy, I’ll get you there. Can’t promise it’ll be a first class ride, but we’ll shake your boy Hux at least. And we’ll keep Rey off the board as long as she needs to get her back up to scratch.”

“So you can nearly get her killed again.”

“You and your guys will be the ones killing her,” Poe said, lifting his eyebrows just a fraction, “so I think we’re pretty even on that front.” Ren stayed silent, even though it seemed fairly clear they both already knew what his answer would have to be. Hux had him pinned here, but it was just one planet in millions. If he wanted to stage a response it would have to start somewhere else, where Hux’s control was weaker and Ren could reassert authority among units that wouldn’t be quite as easy to confuse. Everything Poe was saying made sense but there was still a strong flavor of betrayal to the whole thing, a bitter taste he had to bite back in order to think objectively, plan objectively. The troops participating in this assault were already a foregone conclusion, that much had been made clear, but the First Order was vast and right now Hux directly controlled only a minor fraction of it. Given the right foothold Ren could regain the ground he’d lost, but he needed access to that foothold first.

“I will promise nothing past allowing your ships to leave unchallenged from wherever I need you to transport me,” Ren said. “This will not earn you mercy when the First Order is mine again.”

“What, you thought we’d stop the whole war just because you bounced some blaster bolts off that magic sword of yours?” Poe asked, grinning and holding out his hand. “You’re not doing us that much of a favor.”

Ren accepted the proffered handshake then watched as Poe nodded and walked away, back in the direction of camp, his posture easy but his hand never more than an inch from his holster. Ren stayed a little while longer, needing some time to think while the quiet shadows were his only company.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One of my favorite Ren things to write is him interacting with the Rebels, it's FUN and GREAT and I thoroughly enjoy it :) Hope you do too! And I know every fic writer on the planet has said this before but guys, thanks for the comments, it really does brighten my day every single time and you're all angels and I wish you the best things in this life <3 <3
> 
> My tumblr, it has stuff too, head that way if you like :)
> 
> https://how-do-i-turn-this-thing-off.tumblr.com/


	12. Ren becomes a strategist with the Rebel forces and begins to feel the uneasiness of his presence there

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ren's decision to strike a deal with Poe motivates him to come up with a plan to help the Rebels escape the First Order; however, his relationship with his bunkmates remains shaky at best

The camp slept when Ren approached it, using the Force to slip through the gaps in the perimeter. The fires had been banked and Rey was where he'd left her, her consciousness buried deep under the medication and her own exhaustion. Rose slept on her right and FN-2187 on her left, aligned in such a way as to make it clear that this was their usual configuration, leaving only enough room for one other around their fire, who Ren supposed would usually be Poe. Fortunately Poe seemed to have chosen to sleep elsewhere tonight so Ren took the gap for himself.

His sleep was troubled, broken up by fragmented, meaningless dreams that had him reaching in his mind for Rey twice, a bad habit he'd gotten into in the past few weeks of hunting her across the galaxy. Both times he was surprised by her nearness, too groggy at first to remember that tonight she was only a few feet away. He watched her across the hot coals of the fire until he could sleep again, thinking, still thinking. It had always been the thing Hux said he was worst at, he knew; never paying attention to a greater strategy, to long-term goals rather than short-term tactics. Selfish, Hux would say. Reactive. Reckless. Forever leaping, never looking. It irritated the General that Ren's power was great enough that he could still land on his feet, no matter the risks he took that would kill any other being. Ren had wondered before if that was why Hux had always hated him, but the Force could only reveal the feeling itself and not always its true origins. Still, criticism was not irrelevant just because it proceeded from prejudice. Even the traitor stormtrooper had been yelling at him about strategy today. Hux was cruel and greedy and a little vain, but not necessarily wrong. Between Ren's dreams and his own tainted memories he managed to get only a couple hours of true rest before he was roused by, of all the indignities, someone poking him in the side with a stick.

“What?” FN-2187 asked, for of course it was him, standing over Ren with the stick in hand and an extremely poor attempt at an innocent expression on his face. “I didn't know if you'd try to chop me up if I got too close. Poe says we're not allowed to tie you down and leave you for your troopers to find, so I guess that means you're coming with us.”

Ren didn't dignify that with a response other than sitting up and slapping the stick away with a light Force push that would have taken FN-2187s legs out from under him if he hadn't already anticipated the reaction and backed away, grinning, the stick over his shoulder in a deliberately insolent pose. He wandered off to do whatever it was he did with his free time and Ren made no move to take any further revenge, only considering what might happen to a real stormtrooper who indulged in such antics while the Supreme Leader slept. Death or permanent confinement to hard labor, almost certainly.

He pushed his hair out of his eyes and looked around for his shirt. It wasn't where he'd left it and a quick survey of the immediate area revealed that it was draped across Rose's lap as she sat cross-legged, a needle and thread in her hand.

“I'm not very good at this,” she admitted at once, seeing him looking. “And the fire's not that bright, and it's black, and the thread's black, so it's going to look awful, but I thought you shouldn't have all those gaps across the back and we don't have a jacket big enough for you.”

“Fine,” Ren said shortly, not bothering to add that he'd wrap himself in his blanket for the day before he'd wear something splashed with Rebel insignia. For now he went without, the early morning being humid and warm beneath the canopy anyway as he repacked the bag he'd been given the day before and checked on Rey.

“The medics came and looked at her already, they said she's doing fine,” Rose told him, frowning with concentration then trying not to flinch as she very clearly stuck herself in the finger with her needle. “They got her to drink something, too,” she added, pretending she wasn't bleeding onto his clothes.

“Good,” Ren said, averting his gaze and reminding himself the shirt was already stiff with blood from the day before and another drop or two made no difference. The gloom under the canopy was still as dark as it had been when he'd gone to sleep but the Rebels were up and busy now, going about their routine camp chores, bleary-eyed and silent. He spotted Poe sitting next to Sergeant and looking his way; when Ren caught his eye Poe waved him over. Ren set his pack down near Rose and picked his way toward them, noting as he went that in breaking camp and preparing for another long day the Rebels worked together nearly as well as real soldiers would have. Long practice presumably bred efficiency in any outfit.

“Here,” Poe said when Ren reached them, handing him a container of thick gel that was a dark, translucent yellow. “For your back. I didn't get a good look at it last night but you seem pretty cut up.”

“Don't expect us to put it on for you,” Sergeant growled. “General says you're our escort out of here.”

Ren shrugged as he pocketed the gel, sitting in the empty place across from them and accepting a plate of something brown and poorly toasted that Poe handed him. “How far do we need to go?” he asked, trying a mouthful of the stuff. Bean loaf and gravy, heavily dusted with a mixed spice he couldn't identify and immediately decided he didn't want to.

“Six hours' travel at least, and that's if the First Order don't figure out where we are,” Poe replied. “If they do--.”

“Our goose is cooked,” Sergeant finished for him, glaring at Ren. “Means we'll all die.”

“I'm familiar with the concept of geese,” Ren said, keeping his head down and his expression bland as he kept eating. Poe snorted loudly enough that a couple Rebels at the fire across from theirs looked around. Sergeant pretended to ignore them both but poked at the fire in an affronted sort of way.

“We're going to space out the magnet plating and stick to the thickest part of the forest we can find,” Poe said, leaning to one side as a charred log split in two as a result of Sergeant's attentions and some errant sparks flew his way. “These plants have been messing with their scanners enough that we've guessed there's some kind of electrical interference they're giving off, so we might be able to use that to boost what the plating can do for us. There's a couple tunnels between here and there that we might also be able to duck into but we can't assume they'll be big enough for us, or won't have caved in.”

“Hux will adopt a random search pattern, since I'm with you,” Ren said, finishing the bean loaf, a feat he was rather proud of. It did nothing to alleviate Sergeant's scowl, but he assumed very little could. “The First Order won't use any protocols that he knows I'll be able to anticipate. It'd be better for him to hang back and use his firepower. Small craft like TIE fighters might be able to get in close enough to the outside of the canopy to get more accurate readings, and if speeders catch up to us they can mark our location for both the fighters and the Destroyers in orbit.”

“Cooked,” Sergeant remarked.

“I've considered the problem,” Ren continued, undeterred. “Hux will have decided by now it's more expedient to get rid of me than to stamp out the Rebels. Leave me out in the open, stay wide on my flanks, and if the First Order finds us we can effectively counterattack.”

“No, they'll just follow up every search party with a thousand more guys,” Poe replied, shaking his head.

“That's when we'll use the tunnels,” Ren replied. He'd worked most of it out the night before, in the darkness and while staring at the coals, unable to sleep. Whether or not anyone would be willing to listen to any plan of his was impossible to predict but he was determined to make them if he could. He needed to keep Rey safe and get to safety himself and for the moment, that meant keeping the Rebels as near to intact as possible. “Our maps of the surface show tunnels everywhere, and I'm sure your maps show the same,” he continued calmly, as though he hadn't noticed Sergeant's scowl growing somehow more grim. “Even if Hux does commit substantial ground troops to below ground it'd be impossible to investigate every entrance and exit. He'd do better to populate the main tunnels with a few sparse patrols and focus his speeders on patrolling above ground with response troops. That makes it easier for us to move or to stay, depending on how often they trip over us. Draw in and wipe out their response, go to ground, and once the follow-up has lost us again emerge somewhere else and keep going. It doesn't matter where as long as we make some continuous progress.”

“Slows us down,” Sergeant said, looking to Poe instead of Ren for a response. “Like that we won't make the Falcon until nightfall.”

“Which is preferable anyway, surely,” Ren answered anyway. “If they're monitoring the surface mainly by line of sight while the canopy gets in their way, the ship will need the cover of darkness to stay in one place long enough for us to board safely.”

Poe nodded a couple times, eyes tight as he thought it over. He didn't seem to spare so much as a thought for whether Ren was really the trustworthy ally he seemed to be in helping the Rebels escape, and even though that was the response he'd wanted Ren still couldn't decide whether that was to Poe's credit or not. “So we put you up as bait,” Poe summarized, then gestured around them. “Use some of this dead stuff as camouflage. Carry it with us. Between our scanners and your Force sense we can tell if someone's getting too close. You stand your ground, we bury ourselves, and by the time the stormtroopers realize you're not alone we've got them from both sides.”

“They'll think I've gone off on my own,” Ren said. “If they have time to radio their position they'll only report that they've found me, not you.”

“I like it,” Poe decided, nodding again. “I like it. It'll be slow but we can pick up supplies from the hunting parties, too. Blasters, batteries, food, med kits, whatever we can scavenge.”

“We're low on bean loaf,” Sergeant contributed, which Ren privately thought was no great loss, but Poe only grinned before standing and picking up a cup of something that had been sitting by his feet, draining it in one. 

“You're sure you'll be able to cover your own ass?” Poe asked Ren, looking him over speculatively. “It's going to be a long day, and those speeder blasters are no joke.”

Ren stared at him, wondering just what he'd been doing all this time that the Rebels didn't think he was even capable of handling a couple speeders. “Yes, I'll be fine.”

“Well, it's gutsy, and it's a good plan,” Poe said, shaking the last few drops in the cup out over the fire and tossing it into his pack, “but if you start getting winded you let me know. Rey will Force-smack me to the Outer Rim and back if I let you get shot up while playing the hero.” Before Ren could even begin to process this extraordinary statement Poe turned to Sergeant. “Spread the word,” he ordered. “Tell everyone to find the biggest bit of leaf or pile of vines they can. We need to make for a pretty damn convincing forest floor if we're going to do our part.”

“Yes, sir,” Sergeant said, watching Ren. Poe didn't seem to notice, shouldering his pack and heading towards the rest of the camp, presumably to start detailing the plan to others himself. Ren decided it was time for him to get back to his own campfire pretty quickly after that, standing and hesitating before nodding to Sergeant as he left. Such a nicety wouldn't be necessary in the First Order, where he approached and departed from his troops without ceremony, but as when he'd nearly growled at Rose last night and gotten an immediate glare from everyone nearby he was starting to suspect that the Rebels were a far more sensitive bunch. By the time he'd reached the campfire FN-2187 still hadn't returned but Rose had finished with his shirt and spread it carefully over his pack, repaired side up, while she finished her breakfast. Ren examined it for a moment but the stitches seemed sturdy enough, and they held when he gave the fabric an experimental tug. 

“How is it?” Rose asked, watching him closely and trying to pretend she wasn't.

“Good,” Ren said briefly, and when her expression told him quite clearly that that wouldn't be enough he bit back a sigh, pulling the little tub of healing gel from his pocket. “Before I put it on, could you help me with this? It's for my back.”

“Oh. OH! Yes, of course, I mean, obviously,” she said, immediately setting her plate on the ground and coming over to him, looking dazed in a pleased sort of way way to have been asked. Ren knelt so she'd be able to reach, leaning forward a little as he handed her the pot.

“Just, all over?” Rose asked, hesitating.

“Wherever you think I need it,” he replied. Her fingers brushed him gently, experimentally, across the shoulders, and he bit back any commentary as she poked one of the larger gashes, sending an unexpected flush of pain through him.

“Sorry,” she said immediately, drawing away. “Some of these seem, um, kind of deep, Ren? Are you sure you don't need a real medic?”

“I trust you, Rose.”

His sense of her in the Force immediately flushed with pure, surprised pleasure, followed by a sudden determined self-assurance as she dipped into the gel. It had been a little enough thing to say but he could feel it bolstering her as she spread the medicine across his skin with extreme care, for once not chattering on as she worked, as absorbed in her task as if he had truly been her friend and fellow soldier, rather than an interloper who'd have been happy to kill her on any other day. He closed his eyes, somehow unable to picture that; Rose, maybe falling under blaster fire, or tossed into the air by a lasercanon, or, worst of the worst, a victim of his saber. It was useless to pretend none of those things would happen, or that he wouldn't be at its heart responsible for it even if he didn't cut her apart himself. Would he even know? Unlikely. His soldiers mowed down Rebel scum every day, some of them Poe's men and other fighters, some of them smugglers or politicians, some of them escaped slaves, some of them mechanics. To the First Order it would make no difference. To him it would make no difference.

As Rose finished the pain eased, something in the gel numbing his back, and she ran her fingers over him a few more times, checking to make sure she'd attended to every complaint. “I think I'm done,” she said at last. “Do you feel any better?”

“I do,” he said, standing to his feet and turning towards her. She beamed, handing him the container, and he said, “Thank you,” in a tone that to his ears sounded a little like guilt rather than just gratitude. He turned back to his pack before she could reply, stowing the container and pulling his mended shirt on even though some of the gel was still tacky. He'd lost nearly an inch of length in the back. It made him smile, then made him frown.

“You should tag her file when you're back in charge,” someone said to his right, and he looked up and saw FN-2187 watching him, his pack on and covered in forest detritus, expression hard and unforgiving. “She probably has one, since Crait.”

“What?” Rose asked from where she'd knelt by her pack to similarly decorate it. Ren didn't turn around to see her expression. He knew what FN-2187 was going to say next.

“Means he gets direct updates on you,” FN-2187 explained, not looking away from Ren. “Senior officers do it sometimes, when they want to be notified of a specific death.”

“Finn!” Rose scolded after a moment, standing to Ren's defense.

“He's right,” Ren cut in before she could say anything more. “I've had his file tagged since the day he left.”

“About ready to go?” Poe asked Ren as he came up next to FN-2187, looking between them, expression clearly saying that he noted the palpable tension but didn't have time for it. “We've got the two separate squads pretty much squared away, about even on firepower. A couple of the guys will take turns carrying Rey and hiding her when there's fighting going on. She'll be protected.”

“Keep an eye on it,” Ren said, finally looking away from FN-2187 to address the General.

“Of course,” Poe agreed. “We care about her too, you know.” Ren nodded, shifting his pack onto his shoulders as Poe went over to Rose, offering to help her finish her camouflage. Behind Poe's back FN-2187 showed Ren three fingers then moved his hand, palm down, across the top of his head and behind it, the First Order hand signs that meant 'on your six'. It was impossible to tell if it was meant to be a reassurance or a threat. Ren pretended not to see, looking away as if watching the camp's final preparations, but ran his left hand across his saber hilt as though checking to see it was still on his belt then clasped his right wrist; 'this is for my enemy'. Whoever that enemy turned out to be.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Easy to forget that Ren and Finn share a lot of the same training, isn't it? But I like to call back to that, it makes for a fun time writing-wise :) Finn may not have First Order in his heart anymore, but it will always be in his head


	13. Rey wakes up to see Ren in his new role as a Rebel

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rey regains consciousness and finds that Ren's relationship to her Rebel friends has changed drastically since the last time she saw them together

Rey had spent a lot of time on green planets since Jakku. In fact, as far as she could tell very few planets were as barren and dry as Jakku was; as she saw new portions of the galaxy green had become more the norm than the anomaly. Still, she rarely woke up under what looked like a heaping pile of leaves, broad, tattered leaves that had been many times her size before they’d died. Between their torn edges she could see glimmers of dim sunlight, bright but far away.

She felt lovely, really, warm and content like she hadn’t in a long while. Something seemed to be going on at the borders of her mind, something buzzing like a hornet trapped in the same room she was in, fading in and out of hearing, but she paid it no attention. The sunlight fascinated her and she tried to lift a hand to reach for it but her hand felt oddly heavy. In fact, all of her felt oddly heavy.

It occurred to her that she’d woken up before. Recently. Or tried to.

There were other sounds now, not in the Force but in her physical hearing, but every time she tried to hold on to them for more than a moment it was like she was trying to make sense of music from underwater, a tinny, blurred version of the real thing.

It occurred to her again that she’d woken up before and something felt wrong about that. The sunlight seemed closer now and that distracted her. She reached for it a second time and pushed some of the leaves away, letting more light in, dazzling her eyes so that she blinked hazily. But was it the light making her hazy or something else?

She had woken up. She remembered now. Blurry, squashed memories, leaking away no matter how she tried to hold on to them. Not leaking. Being drained. She grabbed at them harder and felt a flush of feeling that wasn’t her own. Ben was here. Not just close by- although he was that too, she realized now- but here, in her head, pressing against her consciousness, trying to make her sleep. She gasped and immediately fought back, turning over on her stomach as she tried to get to her hands and knees, throwing up shields against him in her mind. He was attempting to communicate something, she could tell, but in her blind animal panic she ignored everything but the urge to flush him out, out, out!

“Shhh!” someone said near her, and she realized she’d said the final ‘out’ aloud. An arm invaded her cover, groping for her, and she almost fought that too before she looked to her left and saw Finn staring back at her under his own layer of tangled green, expression urgent, a finger mashed against his lips in the universal sign for quiet. She froze, staring at him, and felt Ben’s control slip away from her mind now that she had relaxed.

“Where is he?” she whispered as quietly as she could. Finn shook his hand and pointed up and in front of him. She moved towards him, slowly, on her belly, ignoring the damp earth that streaked her clothes with muck. When she was all but pressed against him he gave her a cautious nod and she raised her head, inch by inch, until she could see through a gap in the undergrowth.

Ben stood alone maybe fifty meters from her, a pillar of black in the green light under the green canopy, at ease despite having his saber burning red in his hand while two speeders approached slowly. Rey turned her head slightly and saw two more speeders circling around behind them, aligning themselves with their predecessors. 

“I will not hesitate to continue to execute any First Order troops who defy me,” Ben said coolly. “Either reaffirm your loyalty to me as the Supreme Leader or accept the sentence of all traitors.”

“Please stand down and surrender yourself to the First Order, sir,” the stormtrooper on the lead speeder replied. The other three continued to circle, surrounding Ben on all sides.

“I refuse. Who has issued that order? There is no order that supersedes my own.”

“What are you doing?” Rey hissed, trying to keep her voice down as Finn shoved her back under cover, motioning at her to be quiet. “They’ll start firing on him at any minute!”

“It’s okay, Rey, it’s okay!” he whispered as quietly as he could, but in the Force she felt three other speeders approaching and behind them, at least twenty stormtroopers on foot. If they managed to flank him- if they surrounded him the same way these speeders had-.

The first four speeders opened fire, their blaster bolts bigger and deadlier than hand blasters, and Rey shook off Finn’s restraining hold and stood– or tried to stand, at least, but her legs still felt weaker than usual and she wobbled a little, going down on one knee. She was now exposed above the tangle of the underbrush from the waist up and that, combined with her sudden movement, drew the attention of the nearest speeder, which began to turn towards her. Somewhere to her right she felt another speeder spot her as well, and she raised her hands to do who knew what. Swat at them with the Force like flies, probably, since she could feel her control in the Force was about as shaky as her legs had turned out to be.

Then Ben was there like a shadow made solid, blocking out the sun, his saber weaving a blazing pattern around him in the gloom as he deflected several bolts at once, both the ones meant for Rey and the ones that had followed him as he moved. “Get her down!” he growled, not looking behind him.

“Rey, come on!” Finn said, his hands emerging from the undergrowth, dragging her back to the ground and scooping brush on top of her. “You’re going to give us away!”

She let him cover her as she tried to make sense of what he’d said, finally splaying her Force sense out in both directions. They weren’t alone on the forest floor; others had buried themselves in a long double-file line, a line Ben now moved away from, battling the first four speeders as the other three arrived, the ground troops just behind.

“What do we do?” Rey demanded, pressing herself flat to the ground and looking at Finn accusingly.

“Just, trust him. He’s got it covered,” Finn said, shifting so he was crouched with a blaster in each hand. “Stay down, even when the rest of us move. Okay?” He saw her hesitate and shook his head. “Trust him,” he urged.

“Okay,” Rey agreed finally, nodding, her hands balling into fists. “Okay.” The next moment Ben moved in the Force and a wind blew out and away from him, a low, rolling wind like a wave, and in response to this phenomenon all the Rebels raised their blasters as one and started firing.

It was a terrific noise. Rey clapped her hands to her ears and rolled to the side, risking shedding some of her plant protection to find a gap in the weeds she could see through. Ben had moved back to the spot he’d started from and was surrounded by both speeders and stormtroopers, as she’d feared, but now the Rebel’s withering spray of answering blaster bolts was mowing through their ranks, an identical Rebel line visible off on the other side, doing the same thing. The First Order soldiers tried to respond but between having Ben in their midst and the Rebels all around, with half their number dead in what seemed like a moment, they barely even got off a few shots of their own before they’d been cut down in turn. Ben ignored the Rebel bolts, which gave him and only him a wide berth, instead focusing on wide, arcing Force-throws of his saber, taking out the three speeder riders still left after the initial Rebel response. The last speeder finally wobbled and crashed, its rider headless, as Ben’s saber returned to his hand and he looked around him. Rey could feel his focus shift in the Force, reaching among the bodies he was surrounded by on all sides, checking to make sure the job was done. When he was satisfied he sent another rolling wave of air out and Rey heard the Rebels sigh with relief, standing and shaking off bits and pieces of vines and brush and leaves.

“First wave means 'attack’,” Finn explained, standing to his feet next to Rey and helping her up. “Second wave means 'all clear’. Poe tried yelling the orders at first but we couldn’t hear him once the shooting started, plus this way we can spread out more and not risk a stormtrooper tripping over someone.”

“That was planned,” Rey said out loud, more to confirm it to herself than anything as she watched the Rebels start busily going through the bodies, Poe approaching Ben and speaking softly with him about something. Ben’s red blade snapped out of sight and he clipped the hilt back on his belt. “You said you’ve done this before?”

“Yeah, like, six times today not counting this one,” Finn said with a martyred expression and a dramatic groan as he shifted his bulging pack on his back. “I’m already stuffed up to here with spare batteries and parts Rose keeps finding, if we have to do this much longer we’re going to need to steal some droids too so they can carry some of it. Think I can get Ren to save a speeder for me?” he asked, his expression speculative as he looked at the nearest downed speeder, smoking heavily and clearly unusable.

“Sorry, did you say Ben’s giving orders?” Rey said, just now catching up to that relevant bit of information.

“Well, I mean, signals,” Finn said, frowning but still with a hint of smile in the way he quirked his mouth, the corners of his eyes. “They’re kind of orders, I guess.”

“Rey!” someone else said, and she turned to see Rose come huffing up to them, holding an oddly-shaped machine part in her hand. “Managed to get a converter from one of the speeders finally! They get dented so easily when the speeders drop, but this one’s good as new.”

“Uh-uh, not in my pack,” Finn said, shaking his head and reaching into the undergrowth, shuffling around for a moment before he came up with another pack slung over his arm. “I’m full. Give Rey something to carry, now that she’s awake.”

“Don’t worry Rey, it’s not too bad,” Rose assured her. “We’ve mostly picked up what we can so right now it’s just odds and ends; are you thirsty? We’ve got tons of water, here.” She reached around her belt and handed Rey what looked like a First Order canteen, lightly singed with the mark of a blaster bolt on one corner but still intact. “We’ve got a lot of everything so if you need medicine or food you can just ask.” 

“Thanks,” Rey said as Rose crouched to try and fit the converter into her pack, unscrewing the canteen cap and drinking deeply before looking over to where Ben and Poe were still talking, Poe now with a scanner in his hand, gesturing to the screen. Finn approached them and dropped the second pack at Ben’s feet then punched him in the shoulder; it seemed like a solid hit but for a moment Rey could have sworn he’d pulled it.

“That was damn close, Solo,” Finn said, not bothering to keep his voice down now that it was just Rebels in the area.

“If you could have kept her under the leaves for another minute it would have been fine,” Ben shot back, but with no real heat to the accusation. “What did you do with those meds I gave you, take half of them yourself? You’re as slow as a Hutt.”

“Still quicker on the draw then you. Watch yourself,” Finn said, pointing to a fresh char mark on the outside of one of Ben’s pant legs. He punched Ben in the shoulder again, even more lightly this time, then wandered away to mull over some of the stormtrooper bodies that hadn’t already been picked clean.

“He was yelling at him this morning, but now I think he kind of likes him. Boys are weird,” Rose remarked, standing next to Rey and handing her a pack. “Here, I kept this for when you came around, plus now that I can give it to you I can fit in my converter! Got some water and some basic rations but no bean loaf yet; don’t mention it around Sergeant. He’s not happy.”

“Thanks,” Rey said, taking the pack and putting it on then starting towards Ben, taking her time as she stepped over and around First Order bodies. The water had helped and she felt much steadier now, but her stomach still growled and she wasn’t sure yet how her Force control would hold up once she used it. Poe and Ben seemed to be trying to decide what route to take moving forward but when she reached them they were wrapping up and both turned toward her, Poe smiling.

“Good to see you back on your feet, Rey,” he said. “Feeling alright?”

“Better. How long was I out?” she asked.

“Oh, a day-ish. Get ready for a trek, we’ve got to make the next tunnel before the follow-up gets here.” He turned and started picking his way through the bodies, calling to the others to get ready to move out and leaving Ben and Rey to silently examine each other for a long moment.

“Must have been a long day,” Rey said at last, smiling, trying to get him to smile back.

“You feel steady, in the Force,” he said, his expression still flat and unreadable.

“Do I? I was going to do some exercises, to make sure. It was a little shaky earlier.”

“Rey…” he said, taking a step towards her with one hand extended, and finally she realized what he was trying to do as he made the living Force around them swell gently across her skin and against her temples, reminding her. She relaxed and reached for their bond, finding in it all the worry he was having trouble expressing in words, mingled with relief and some exasperation, she assumed because the first thing she’d done after waking up was almost get shot to pieces. The feelings had a strange built-up quality to them, as though he’d been pushing them towards her for a while now, probably since the shooting stopped and he was able to take a breath and concentrate a little more.

“Sorry,” she said out loud. “I wasn’t paying attention. I’m all right.”

What was left of his concern eased and he nodded, his hand dropping back to his side. “I thought you were ignoring me on purpose. Because I was trying not to let you wake up.”

“You know that I don’t like it when someone’s in my head.” He nodded again, uncertainty clouding his expression, and she reached for him, sending feelings of reassurance and forgiveness that still didn’t quite alleviate his doubt.

“Guys, gotta go!” Poe called to them from the edge of the clearing where the rest of the Rebels has assembled around him. “Next tunnel’s about ten minutes away and we’ve got First Order on our ass.”

“We’re going to have to get under cover fast,” Ben said, picking up the pack Finn had brought over for him then glancing back at her, his hand settling on his lightsaber hilt almost absentmindedly. “Can you keep up?”

She nodded, trying to think of something more to say but he’d already gestured for her to go ahead as he scanned the forest in the direction the search party had come from. She fell in line with the other Rebels who were already following Poe at a quick trot, some of them breathing heavily under their unusually full packs, all of them covered in layers of leaves and vines and dirt, shedding tiny bits of mud and debris as they headed for cover. Ben took the rear position, his Force senses splayed out around and behind them to give them as much warning as possible when the First Order caught up to them. She wanted to ask when that had been decided- when any of this had been decided- what the hell was going on in general- but she needed to save her breath for running. As much as she could she sent Ben her intent to question him at length the moment they stopped, and looked back one more time just as he glanced up at her, still unsmiling but sending back a vague impression that almost felt like amusement.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's a mark of how badly Rey needed the rest that she didn't immediately freak out on Ren when she realized he was in her mind KEEPING HER UNCONSCIOUS, which you'd think would cross several very significant lines on any other day. I guess it's also a mark of how surprised she is, lol
> 
> As always, Tumblr here:
> 
> https://how-do-i-turn-this-thing-off.tumblr.com/


	14. Rey struggles with her recovery

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ren and Rey are reunited but Rey's use of the Force is still nowhere near what it was

“He’s still an idiot,” Finn muttered, grinning as Rose leaned against him, her eyes half-lidded, dozing on his shoulder.

“Your traitor friend called me ‘muscle brains’,” Ben told Rey from where he was sitting against the tunnel wall next to her, eyes closed as he moved in the Force, backing up the scanners and making sure no unexpected First Order patrols came near them.

“And see, it worked. Your next plan was a lot better. That’s what you need, Solo, someone to put the pressure on, keep you honest.”

Ben snorted, though whether it was at the idea of Finn pressuring him to do anything or at the general concept of honesty, it was hard to tell. Rey smiled automatically, rubbing a First Order lotion into her shoulders that Ben had told them helped alleviate sore muscles. Pretty much the entire Rebellion had descended on their packs after that, those who had been lucky enough to grab a tube sharing with those who had spent their precious pack space on other supplies. The substance had a somewhat unpleasant, oily texture, but once on the skin it dried surprisingly well, leaving behind a light smell somewhere between anise and wood smoke. The Rebels hardly minded; it did the job, relaxing even aches that were several days old, and being just a little smelly was a reality they were all comfortable with after however many years of guerrilla warfare had too often left them short on baths and personal hygiene options in general.

Another thing the lotion did was give Rey time to think. Ben had updated her on everything that had happened in the day she’d missed, trying and failing to keep Finn and Rose from interrupting with contributions of their own once every other sentence. Rey could tell he was unwilling to talk too much about the First Order’s unexpected targeting of him, at least while they were in the company of others, but Finn seemed to want to dwell on it, describing in detail all the things First Order troops had been saying within Rebel hearing that doubly and triply confirmed what he seemed to perceive as a total overthrow. Ben acted like he wasn’t quite so convinced but there was an unsettling feeling of doubt in him that she couldn’t seem to get hold of, as though he didn’t want her to know what was causing it. She hoped that wasn’t the case but the doubt persisted, threaded through his thoughts every time the First Order came up, and Rey was grateful when Poe appeared, crouching down in their little circle with a sigh.

“I don’t know how soon we’re going to be good to head out again,” he said, waving a hand at his scanner. “They look like they’re moving off more quickly than before, but they could just be spreading out and trying to cover this area in case we use a different tunnel exit on our way forward.”

“How is everyone?” Finn asked quietly.

“In good spirits. A little tired but, you know, enjoying feeling like we’re making some progress for a change. Even just having the extra food and water helps. Now, what’s this magic First Order lotion I’ve been hearing about?”

“Rey and I need to go test her Force control,” Ben said, opening his eyes and sitting up.

“Now?” Poe asked.

“Now,” Ben confirmed, standing. Rey scrambled to her feet next to him, trying at the same time to mentally assess her connection to the Force, how it felt, whether it was steady. Without actively using it it was difficult to tell.

“Well, take your packs so you have some magnet plating and don’t go much farther than the edge of camp, okay? When it’s time to go I don’t want to have to work to find you.”

“We’ll be close,” Ben said briefly, shouldering his pack. Rey nodded, shouldering hers.

“Watch each other’s backs,” Finn reminded them. If ever anyone had pulled off an eye roll in the Force Ben did it then, ignoring Finn and starting to pick his way down the tunnel. Rey smiled and gave Finn a little wave that she hoped was reassuring, then followed.

The Rebels smiled or said hello to Rey as they passed- some even asked how she was doing, and she slowed down a step or two to assure them she was fine- but they didn’t acknowledge Ben beyond a glance and he didn’t acknowledge them, either. She supposed that was better than she could have hoped, since it was too much to expect that everyone would just automatically accept him without the mental window into his head that she had; besides, Ben probably preferred not talking to them. He lead her to the end of the tunnel and then only around the first turn, just barely out of sight before stopping and dropping his pack.

“Here?” Rey asked, just to be sure.

“This should be fine,” Ben said, gesturing for her to put her pack down. She did, slightly disappointed and scolding herself for it. She’d thought they might be headed for a continuation of what they’d been doing the last time they were alone in a tunnel together, whatever Ben said about Force exercises, but apparently he’d been serious.

“Rey,” Ben reminded her softly, his tone slightly rebuking, and she realized with sudden and appalling clarity that this close together he’d easily been able to follow the progression of her thoughts. 

“Sorry,” she said, mortified, turning away to avoid looking him in the eye as she busied herself with making sure her pack was propped against the tunnel wall just so. Even though she couldn’t see him behind her in the bond she could swear she felt him trying not to smile.

“It’s fine, just– it makes it a little difficult, when you’re thinking about it around me and I’m trying not to.”

“No, you’re right, you’re right,” she mumbled, straightening up and easing another step away from him, taking a few deep, centering breaths. “We shouldn’t. And I’m filthy anyway.”

“And you weren’t last time?” he asked, his teasing smile even more obvious now, and she glanced up at him and tracked his pointed glance to the patch of tunnel wall directly next to them, a wall less rocks and roots and more soft, raw loam.

“Oh. Yeah. I guess,” she mumbled, looking away again.

“Rey,” he said again, his tone going serious, the smile slipping from his face as he raised one hand. “Let me look you over. Please.”

“From the inside?” she sighed, already uncomfortable with the prospect. No, this was not going to be the potentially passionate reunion scene she’d been trying, and failing, not to think about. At all.

“Yes.” 

“I’m fine, Ben.”

“I’m not sure of that,” he replied. “Just let me check.”

She wrapped her arms around herself reflexively then made herself drop them, nodding and shrugging at the same time. A moment later she felt him move in the Force, pressing against her side where he’d healed her before, lingering there for a second in case she changed her mind and tried to stop him. She didn’t and his energy sank into her, gently, Ben himself sending feelings of reassurance and care through the bond as he took brief but thorough stock of her. He withdrew only a couple seconds later, and his feelings flushed with anger and frustration.

“You’re still tired,” he accused.

“Only a little,” she protested, not quite meeting his eyes, as though that was going to do her any good. “I wasn’t really ready for the run here, but I’m fine.”

“Don’t lie to me, Rey,” he grated out, taking a step toward her. “You’re still tired from yesterday, I can feel it in you like rot.”

“Well, then maybe I shouldn’t let you examine me anymore, if you’re going to be mean about it,” she snapped, still not looking at him. “I’m fine, Ben.”

“Fine.” he repeated in a condemning tone. “Well, prove it to me then.” She glanced back up just as he moved in the Force again, reaching to the edge of the tunnel where a stone about the size of her fist sat next to the wall and sliding it out between them. “Lift the rock.”

She narrowed her eyes at him but did as she was told without comment, making the rock rise and hover in the air at about chest height. Well, chest height for him. It didn’t wobble even once, just sat in the air between them as solidly as it had been when it was sitting on the ground. She felt some of her own secret worry ease, smiling in relief and looking at Ben expectantly.

“Give it over to me,” he said, moving in the Force so he held it as well. She nodded, letting her hold slip away. He kept it in place just as steadily as she had; to an observer, it wouldn’t have seemed as though any transfer had taken place.

“Now take it from me,” Ren said, moving back a couple more paces and staying there, setting his feet, his hands behind his back. The rock moved slightly as well so it was still roughly in the middle between them.

“To where?” she asked.

“To yourself. Like we did on the Supremacy, with the lightsaber.” She raised her eyebrows at him, remembering how that had gone, and he shrugged. “Even if we do end up splitting this rock I don’t think it will be any great loss.”

Rey hesitated, worried. She’d been able to hold the rock steady, but that had surprised her. Remembering Ben was probably reading every fluctuation of her feelings she tried to clamp down on her trepidation, taking another deep, centering breath. She could do it. She’d done it before. It wasn’t as though she hadn’t been tired then, too. A different kind of tired, but still. She reached out in the Force as though she was picking the rock back up again. Her Force seemed to slip off, his own pushing her away. She frowned and pressed down, hard, and got a tiny hold on her end, a hold he only gave her reluctantly. Not enough to move the rock but enough to lay claim to it.

This was so stupid. She closed her eyes, fighting down the annoyance, the fear. It was just a rock. But that was the problem– how was she supposed to summon the same kind of power she’d used in Snoke’s throne room, when it was the lightsaber, when it was life or death, Dark or Light, when it had seemed like the only thing that mattered in the whole universe? She gritted her teeth, clamping down harder, gaining perhaps an inch more of purchase. Enough to move it, but when she tried it didn’t budge.

She reached out a hand, calling more power to her, more strength, her frustration increasing as well, threatening to sour her focus. She pushed that down and focused on her task, yanking on the rock with a sharp tug that would have sent it shooting toward her like a blaster bolt if Ben had let go. He didn’t let go, clamping down with his own power, keeping it in place. The rock seemed to wobble for a moment but it was so minute she couldn’t tell if she’d imagined it or not.

“Don’t just use strength, Rey,” Ben instructed, and she noticed he hadn’t moved at all and silently cursed him for it. He wouldn’t hear the words, since she hadn’t meant him to, but he’d notice the feeling of them. “Move in the Force,” he continued, ignoring her ire. “Twist the rock. Bend it. Fight my power directly. If you can’t get it to come to you, try getting it to go up first, or down, or side to side. Anything to shake my hold.”

She centered herself again and obeyed, pushing with all her strength towards him. That surprised him- he hadn’t expected that to be the direction she’d go- enough to catch him off guard for a moment, but she used that moment and his suddenly shakier grip to swing it around back towards her. It was enough to gain an inch, but that was all.

“Rey,” Ben said as she tried to spin it, and barely made it even shake. 

“Had you going for a second there,” she said, trying to smile, knowing it came out as a grimace. Even as much Force as she was using now was starting to eat at her, just a little, on the edges, but she could still feel it.

“Rey,” he repeated, his tone warning, the bond strong in him with worry, with growing suspicion and wrath.

“So touchy,” she muttered, shooting the rock upwards– or trying to. It didn’t move, but inside her she felt a little more energy drain away.

Ben’s anger suddenly expanded in the bond, so much that she felt it in the living Force, and his hold on the rock went dark as a shadow as, with a snap and a whipping motion, he tore the rock from her grip and flung it into the soft dirt wall, so hard that it stuck there as other clumps of dirt showered down to the tunnel floor, shaken loose by the impact. She stared at it then looked down, suddenly ashamed as Ben advanced on her.

“You’re lying to me,” he accused, his voice rasping with the strength of what he was feeling.

“You can’t treat me like something fragile, Ben,” she said, but the protest sounded hollow even to her.

“Do you know what happened in that tunnel, Rey?” he demanded. She said nothing, still looking at her feet. “Do you know what happened?” he repeated. “Because I don’t, but I felt it. I felt you go dark. I felt you disappear from my mind.”

“What?” she asked, shocked into looking up at him.

“There was nothing there. No feelings, no words, no anything. Just a hole, like you’d been torn away. For a moment there wasn’t even that.”

She stared at him, unable to look away now that his eyes and feelings had captured her. It was like before, when she’d been ignoring the bond unintentionally, except now she’d thought she had been paying attention only there was more there, so much that she hadn’t been able to detect, like an undercurrent that his conscious immediate thoughts had been able to disguise, smooth over, wash away. “Were you hiding this from me?” she asked.

“No, Rey,” he said, standing just before her, reaching out with both hands to cup her face between them. “I didn’t want to feel it or think about it either.” He stared down at her, so fiercely and with so much emotion that just that look alone felt nearly as intimate as when they’d kissed, and when she didn’t try to move or look away he blinked then sighed, closing his eyes. “You’re shaken, in the Force,” he said, verbalizing what both of them already knew. “Shaken down to your core. I feel it the same way you feel it.”

“So what do we do?” she asked, as softly and as gently as she could, watching his closed eyes, reaching for all those things he didn’t want to feel as though she might somehow be able to relieve some of the weight of them.

“I don’t know, yet,” he said, and she felt the surge of his determination, reassuring her, reaching back through the bond, through his own feelings, his own fears. Then he sighed again. “You can come around the corner, Poe,” he said, releasing her and stepping back. “We’re not doing anything.”

“Time to head out,” Poe said, stepping into their part of the tunnel very cautiously regardless, looking around as though he expected he would need to avert his eyes at any minute and wanted to be prepared. He seemed almost taken aback to find that they really weren’t doing anything inappropriate. “You two good?”

“Rey is still recovering,” Ben said in what Rey was quickly beginning to recognize as his command tone. “She’ll need to stay near me for a while until she’s regained control again.”

“Um, okay? And how long will that take?”

“I don’t know.” 

“This good with you?” Poe asked, glancing at Rey.

“I need it,” she said with a little nod and a smile. “I’m more tired than I thought.”

“If I stay near her I can support her in the Force if she needs me,” Ben said, picking up their packs and handing Rey’s to her. “And I can stop her if she tries to go too far again.” Rey looked away, uncomfortable with him acting like her babysitter but unable to deny that it would be a relief to have him close by, just in case her own imbalance took her by surprise.

“I swear,” Poe muttered, rubbing a hand over his face. “Okay. If you say so, Ren, okay. But keep me posted. Rey?” He waited for her to look up and raised his eyebrows expectantly. “Keep me posted.”

“I will, Poe,” she said, nodding and trying to smile. He didn’t look very convinced but then again, even while it was on her face it hadn’t felt very convincing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've started a new series!! The first three chapters have already gone up on Tumblr and I'll be bringing them on over to Ao3 some time today, so watch for that! It's waaaay out of my usual bent- an au, of all things, which I've never tried before- but I was getting a little burned out on TRLS and needed a break. Doesn't mean I'm done with TRLS, AT ALL, and believe me when I say I'm still very invested in this series and where it's going, but Tag Galaxy has been a lot of fun and an exciting challenge that I think you'll enjoy reading as much as I enjoy writing it!
> 
> Tumblr fun times, as per:
> 
> https://how-do-i-turn-this-thing-off.tumblr.com


	15. Hux changes his pattern of attack

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ren, Rey, and the Rebels continue their trek to meet up with the Falcon but in the meantime the First Order switches up their strategy

Ren lead the Rebels back to the surface, Rey staying close on his heels as promised, Poe just behind her, scanner out. Rey tried to move in the Force once, to spread her senses and try to sniff out enemies the way Ren was doing already, but he sent her a sharp look over his shoulder and she hesitated only a moment before withdrawing sheepishly, saving her strength. Once he and Poe were satisfied the area was clear they set a new route towards the Falcon, the Rebels fanning back out into formation, half on Ren’s right, half on his left. Rey stayed with Ren without comment, and that he allowed after a long moment of considering whether she’d be safer with him or not. In the end he decided that if anyone did creep up on them he’d know far enough in advance that she could get under cover before they were within line of sight.

This planet wasn’t so bad, considering. He continued on as if he and Rey were alone, constantly scanning, both the area and, if he was honest, Rey as well. They traveled in and out of crosswise shadows as the sun set, making for strange elongated patches of sunlight and darkness across the forest floor as the wedge-shaped canopy leaves promised a gloomy dusk. Rey didn’t seem to tire too quickly but Ren kept checking her anyway, worried she might unconsciously draw on the Force if her regular energy started to flag.

“Quit it,” she finally snapped as she felt him study her in the bond for what must have been the tenth time since they’d left the tunnels. He withdrew without comment. “I can still walk, you know,” she pointed out in a huffy tone.

“For now.”

“Oh, shut up. Like you’ve never pushed yourself too far.”

He stopped, turning as she nearly ran into him. “Never that far,” he told her in a flat, accusatory tone.

“Ben–,” she said, but he’d already turned around and started walking again, unwilling to stop the whole Rebel procession just to have this conversation. Behind him she sighed. “You’re not the forgiving type, are you?”

“It’s going to get dark soon. Do you have a light in your pack?”

“I have enough Force for that,” she protested. He didn’t respond verbally but deliberately made his mood in the bond very grim. “Fine, I have a light,” she muttered.

“Good,” he said, and they lapsed into silence for a long while, tramping along through the underbrush in the general direction Poe had indicated on his scanner. On either side the Rebels trudged along with them, just close enough to hear their movements but too far away to make out what they said the few times they spoke to each other.

Dusk swallowed up their group quickly and the lights came out on either side, dim walking lights kept pointed carefully at the ground. Rey got hers out as well, though Ren kept an eye on her in the Force suspiciously just in case. She didn’t try to use her Force sense as promised, which was something. He didn’t know how much longer they’d be able to be this cautious, however, or how much longer she’d be willing to be. She was ashamed of herself now- as she should be, thinking she could deceive him, of all people- but she had a temper, too, and he predicted she wouldn’t be willing to stay quiet about it for long. But if they could at least get off this rock and into open space, where there was far less for her to spend her energy on, she’d have a better overall chance than if they stayed here and continued to be hunted.

It was full dark before Ren finally felt them, cruising at the edge of his senses– First Order speeders, headed roughly their direction. He stopped, sending out the first rush of air that would alert the Rebels. On both sides they immediately stopped as well, dousing their lights and hastily starting to hunker down in the brush.

“Poe’s over there,” he told Rey, turning toward her and pointing in Poe’s direction as he handed over his pack. “Use a blaster. ONLY a blaster.” She frowned at him but didn’t say anything, heading off toward that part of the line as Ren fired his saber, ensuring that anyone close enough to get a glimpse of them would be distracted by the burning red light, crackling with energy at his side. It seemed far brighter now that night had fallen, cutting a wide swath of crimson around him in all directions.

The attack, what there was of one, was over fairly quickly. He had only four speeders to contend with overall, even when the ground troops caught up; apparently Hux was being a little more conservative with his resources. It made sense and at the same time, it didn’t. Hux was not by nature a conservative person. He relied heavily on the greater numbers the First Order could produce for him, rarely stopping to consider a strategy that held more in reserve rather than less. It was one of the things he and Ren disagreed about routinely and for Hux to withdraw troops now, when it was Ren in play of all people, rather than throw everything he had at them, was so atypical as to be disturbing.

“Good work,” Poe said the moment it was over and the lightsaber’s burning blade winked out of sight, seeking Ren out right away, as usual, his scanner in hand. “Nearest decent tunnel system skews to the right. A bit off our path but it’ll keep them guessing. Any closer and we might go to ground right into a nest of stormtroopers.”

Ren nodded, examining the scanner Poe handed him, but the uncomfortable, instinctive sense of doubt in the back of his mind still refused to be shifted. “How much farther to the Falcon?”

“Couple hours, tops. It’d be shorter except we’ll have to account for going out of our way. Plus we might hit more patrols between here and there.”

“Unlikely. It took hours for this one to find us.”

“Maybe they’re packing up for the night,” Poe said. “That’d be a lucky break as far as we’re concerned. The Falcon’s pretty well hidden, so they might think we’re stranded for the time being.” Ren nodded again and Poe left, speaking to a couple others who were still picking among the bodies for loot. He watched Rey and Rose taking something apart, their heads bent over their work, and wanted to go to them but something held him back. The Rebels, stranded? Even if it had been true Hux would be a fool to consider it. Better to blockade the whole damn planet and pour stormtroopers over it until every continent looked white even from space.

Ren turned in place restlessly, not realizing who he was looking for until his eyes caught on FN-2187, already halfway toward him, frowning with more than just a little end-of-day weariness.

“You think so too,” Ren said without preamble as FN-2187 stopped next to him, lowering his voice as other Rebels passed on their way to start assembling near Poe.

“Completely off book,” FN-2187 agreed just as bluntly. “Unless it’s not Hux?”

“It’s Hux,” Ren said, gesturing to himself. FN-2187 took his point; there was no way Hux would leave this to a less senior officer in any regard.

“Then what?” FN-2187 said. “He can’t have lost us.”

“No, the rough trajectory’s clear by now.”

“Trying out something new? Something you won’t know about?”

“Maybe,” Ren said, frowning at the scene around him. It still didn’t feel right, and he only had to glance at the set of FN-2187’s shoulders and mouth to know he agreed without it having to be said out loud. Before he could say more Rose and Rey came towards them, Rose still stuffing Rey’s pack with electroscopes.

“I want to experiment with these, and we don’t need more of anything else,” she explained as both Ren and FN-2187 stared. “Plus Rey still has room in her pack.”

“Happy to help,” Rey said, smiling as she adjusted her straps. “You guys pick anything up?”

“We’re full from earlier,” FN-2187 answered for both of them, just as Poe waved them over and started the first few Rebels on their way to the next tunnel. They kept their pace to a brisk walk, their scanners showing no one in the immediate area that might be cause for concern and the whole Rebel militia needing the break. Ren waited to join everyone, taking up the rear as usual with Rey just in front of him, and when they reached the tunnel opening he filed in after them only long enough to catch up to FN-2187, who had taken a position close to the entrance and was waiting for him. They shed their packs without comment and turned back, relieving the two Rebels who had been left just inside the tunnel mouth as guards. They were glad to get off their feet and didn’t take much convincing to turn over their post; Ren waited until they were gone then ascended the scant few feet back out into the open, wishing the canopy wasn’t quite so thick so that he could see the stars.

“If we’re doing this, you’re calling me Finn,” FN-2187 said abruptly, and Ren turned toward him, looking him over in the darkness. “I’m not part of the First Order anyway, yeah?” FN-2187 insisted. “Doesn’t make sense to have me use a First Order op number. Besides, Finn’s a nickname from that number anyway. F, N. Finn.”

“If we’re doing what?” Ren replied.

“I don’t know, but we’re doing something, aren’t we?”

He looked back out into the darkness, stretching his senses as far as he could and still finding nothing out the ordinary. It didn’t alleviate his unease at all. “Yes,” he agreed quietly. “We’re doing something.” 

“Good.”

He said it in an expectant way, like he was waiting for the rest of what remained to be said, and Ren knew he was waiting for the name issue to be decided. It wasn’t quite as easy as task as FN-2187 might think, or else he had forgotten what living in the First Order was like. Op numbers were more familiar to Ren than names now, and had been for years. Names like the Rebels used- Rose, Finn, Poe, Rey- seemed almost cut off, incomplete, like they were missing some crucial information. It was a relief to have at least one person who had an op number nearby, even a traitor.

But FN-2187 was undeniably right to point out that he wasn’t First Order anymore, and never would be again. Maybe using an op number for him now, after everything he’d done, was a betrayal in itself.

“Don’t hurt yourself, Solo,” FN-2187 said sarcastically, unable to miss the long, uneasy silence as Ren tried to consider the problem. “It’s not that hard a stretch. Just a name.”

“I’ll work on it,” Ren said honestly. Finn- for his name was Finn, and Ren was going to have to find a way to get used to that fact- bridled slightly at the compromise, then shook his head.

“I guess it’s hard to break out of,” he admitted, reluctantly but also somewhat reflectively. “Years of training, conditioning, reconditioning, re-reconditioning. Old habits and all that.”

“Yes,” Ren agreed, glancing at Finn then looking away again, thinking that it didn’t seem as though it had been very hard for him at all.

“Well, I’m going to call you on it every time,” Finn said. “We’ll get you trained.” Ren huffed out a surprised laugh at that, at the bald temerity of even thinking that kind of sentence in his direction, shaking his head, and felt Finn grin in the dark. After that they sat in silence for a long while, both thinking their own thoughts, noting the small, woodsy noises all around them as unknown things crept and crawled and flew and slid past them. It would have unnerved some beings. Neither of them so much as twitched, instead staying quiet and alert, Ren focused on his Force sense, Finn with a scanner in hand, splitting his attention between their surroundings and the screen.

“Poe’s on his way,” Ren commented after a long while, sensing the General moving towards them along the tunnel.

“Took him long enough,” Finn commented, and Ren could only agree, though he didn’t say it out loud. “So, scouting mission?” 

“Yes.”

“We’ve let the dust settle long enough,” Finn mused, standing up straight and stretching, working the kinks out of his back and shoulders. “Time to see what Hux is planning for us.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Much as I love the idea of Ren and Poe finding a way to work together, I love the idea of Ren and Finn finding common ground even more, especially since I think Finn’s less naturally inclined to give Ren a second chance compared to Poe-worships-the-ground-Leia-walks-on-Dameron. Doesn’t mean they’re adding each other on SpaceBook quite yet!! As Finn would say, don’t get it twisted. If you're looking for more Reylo fic goodness the first three chapters of 'Tag Galaxy', my other Reylo fic, are up on Ao3 now!! See what you think :)
> 
> My tumblr:
> 
> https://how-do-i-turn-this-thing-off.tumblr.com/


	16. Finn and Ren plan a mission, Ren says goodbye to Rey

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Honestly, if you've made it this far in the story don't you just trust me by now?

It was hard to say what Poe was surprised by more, Finn and Ren’s shared assertion that the First Order was planning something unexpected and unpleasant, or their equally shared assertion that they wanted to go out and investigate whatever it was. 

“You two?” Poe said, pointing to first one and then the other of them, looking more than a little doubtful. “A scouting mission? Together?”

“We’re both familiar with First Order field protocols,” Ren said, resisting the urge to refer to said protocols in any way as ‘having actual training’ purely for the sake of expediency. “We know how to operate efficiently as a unit, and what we’re looking for.”

Poe didn’t seem swayed by this argument, instead looking at Finn. “With this guy?” he repeated, jerking a thumb at Ren.

“He’s right,” Finn deadpanned. “We knew something was up the moment that search party hit us with less troops than before. We both knew.”

“Hux doesn’t hit with less when he’s been beaten, he hits with more, always more,” Ren added. “The only reason to withdraw already committed troops from the field is if he’s planning something.”

“And if Hux is planning something big enough to call off search parties it’s going to be something nasty,” Finn continued. “You think Hux hates us?” he asked, gesturing between himself and Poe, then nodding at Ren. “You’ve never seen how Hux hates him. I mean, everyone hates you,” he added to Ren, “but even then, Hux is at the top of that foodchain.”

“Okay, this is weird,” Poe said before Ren could think up a response to that, waving his hands to cut them both off. “I mean, I appreciate the initiative guys, but hearing you talk like this is weird anyway. It’s like some kind of First Order hive mind.” Neither Finn nor Ren replied, Ren suspected mostly because they both agreed but neither of them felt like confirming it out loud, and Poe sighed explosively, putting his hands on his hips. “Okay. What do you think is going on?”

Finn and Ren glanced at each other. “Ambush,” Finn finally said.

“Ren?” Poe asked. 

“It’s the most likely option,” he agreed.

“What are the other options?”

“A more concerted, organized effort to hunt you and your people down, both above ground and in the tunnel system so you have nowhere to go,” Ren said. “But that would take time and planning, and Hux doesn’t have the first and doesn’t have the patience for the second.”

“General Hux spends stormtroopers like water, even more than anyone else in command,” Finn put in. “Speeders too, and TIE-fighters, even Destroyers, he doesn’t care. The First Order churns them out like cups of blurrgfire in a cantina.”

“Yeah, that I know, that I know,” Poe said, frowning, looking at Ren. “What do you mean when you say he doesn’t have time?”

“If his intention is to take this any further than it’s already gone and consolidate power among more First Order sectors, he has to kill me as quickly as possible. Failure to do so would be catastrophic at first, and fatal eventually.”

Poe stared for a moment then shook his head, looking away. “You’re a scary guy, Kylo Ren,” he said after a beat. “I’m glad you’re not on my tail at the moment.” He glanced back into the tunnel and seemed to consider something before turning back to Ren. “If you’re not here and something happens, do you think Rey has enough juice to hold them off?”

That gave Ren pause, not only because it was a good question but also because he hadn’t considered Rey at all while thinking about how to confront this latest problem. He’d just naturally assumed the tunnels would be a safe place to leave her because they’d run into so few tunnel patrols today, forgetting that it was her fighting to save the Rebels in the tunnels just a day before that had gotten both her and him in this whole mess to start with. “Rey is weaker than I anticipated,” he said slowly, not sure how much was appropriate to say when he was talking about her without her there to hear what was said. “Not very much weaker physically, but her feeling in the Force is… unsteady. Untethered. It’s hard to describe.”

“Does she have the juice?” Poe repeated.

“If she’s careful,” Ren said. “Very careful. I’ll talk to her.”

“Sure, sure,” Poe said, waving at the tunnel and shaking his head. “I’ll keep watch. Tell Sergeant I need a couple guys up here to take over for you and Finn when you’re done.” Ren nodded his agreement, making his way back into the tunnel.

One thing that was amazing, he reflected as he reached the Rebel camp, was how versatile the Rebel system of organization was proving to be. Despite their latest place of rest being a narrow, dirt-and-stone-floored tunnel, different in every way from the spacious and open forest floor up above, at a glance he could already see that they’d found a rough pattern to bed down in that echoed the same fire circles from the night before. He didn’t have to go far to find Rey, unsurprised, somehow, to see that when she and Rose had continued on into the tunnel but Finn and Ren hadn’t joined them, they’d circled around until they’d found the packs Finn and Ren had left behind and had arranged themselves there. Space was cramped but they didn’t seem to mind, Rose already curled up and asleep, Rey sitting in a meditative pose, working in the Force to try and correct some of the fluctuations she was feeling. As he approached she opened her eyes.

“How are you?” he asked, crouching down in the empty space across from hers.

“It’s just light work, Ben,” she said, something a little calmer about her, a little more relaxed and fluid than it had been before. “I’m not wasting any of my energy on it.”

That hadn’t been precisely what he’d been asking but he let it go, nodding once. She studied him, both physically and in the bond. “Poe said you and Finn had taken guard duty together.”

“Yes.”

“Well, that’s good, isn’t it?” Rey said in an encouraging tone, unwinding her legs from each other and instead drawing them up to her chest, wrapping her arms around them. “I think you’re making progress with him.”

Ren honestly couldn’t say if he was or not, or if that mattered either way, but didn’t dwell on it for more than a moment. “I’m leaving,” he told her.

“What?!” she gasped, head jerking up.

“Scouting mission,” he said, waving his hand in a calming motion. “We’re going to go ahead and check the route. I don’t know how long it will take.”

“Oh,” she said, mollified. “What do you think you’ll find?”

“I don’t know. But while I’m gone you need to take care of yourself, Rey. In the Force.”

She frowned slightly, looking down and away from him. “I know.”

“It’s not just for you, Rey, it’s for me too,” he insisted. “If I’m out there and I feel something happen to you, what am I supposed to do? How do I react, knowing you’ve been hurt again?” She said nothing to that but he could feel the reflection of the panic and fear from the memories he’d shared with her when he’d healed her before flooding the bond as she remembered them herself, drawing them up inside him as well. He let them flow through and past him, letting them go, and felt her do the same after a moment, following the pattern of what he’d done even if she didn’t know precisely how or why.

“Okay, Ben,” she said very, very quietly, then repeated it in his head, wrapped in sincerity and concern for him. Okay, Ben. It was small but profound, that gesture of trust and agreement, even though he could tell she wanted to insist on her own strength, her own ingenuity, her own resilience, and it made him reach for her before he knew what he was doing, physically, across the space between them, tilting her head up towards his and kissing her once, on the lips. She tasted like something he remembered from his childhood that he no longer had any name for, a particular sweet that stung your lips as you ate it, and also like the kind of power he’d always dreamed of having, the kind that meant safety, the surety that only came from being the absolute strongest in everything.

But above and beyond that she tasted like a spice, a spice he’d had only once and very recently.

“Dammit,” he swore, breaking away from her. “Sergeant found some bean loaf, didn’t he?”

She gasped out a surprised laugh, clapping her hands over her mouth, the bond flooding with her mirth, bright and warm within him. “You don’t like it?” she managed to ask through her fingers.

“I despise it, to tell you truth,” he sighed, sitting back on his heels again. “Don’t tell him.” She laughed again, hard, her shoulders shaking with it as she tried to muffle the sound, and he watched as though she were the only thing that existed in the galaxy, letting it fill him up. It was the sweetest pleasure to be so near her and to make her laugh and he wished with everything in him that it would last longer than however long it was destined to be his already.

Finally she composed herself, dropping her hands and breathing deeply, steadying herself. “If I’d known you were going to kiss me I would have tried to drink some juice or something.”

“I had no way to warn you. I didn’t know I was going to kiss you, either,” he said, reaching for her hand. He placed the hilt of his lightsaber in it and she looked up at him, surprised again. “You’ll be stronger with this,” he said, letting it say everything else that meant for him. Safer. Better able to defend yourself. More likely to be here when I get back. “Take it.”

“What will you do?” she asked.

“I know how to use a blaster, Rey,” he said patiently. “It’s not that hard.”

“But are you sure?” she asked, her hand tightening on the hilt even as she glanced upward at the ceiling then back at him. “Are you sure you want to go out there without it?”

As a matter of fact he was very, very sure he didn’t- that he would rather leave one of his arms behind than his blade- but the thought of it in her hand in his absence, a piece of him protecting her, more than overpowered the discomfort of not having it himself. “I’ll be back soon,” he said, standing to his feet, glancing at Rose, still sleeping on the ground to his left. “Stay safe.”

“May the Force be with you,” she murmured.

“And with you,” he agreed.

He made his way back to the surface after picking up both his and Finn’s packs, strapping on two blasters, and making the promised visit to Sergeant, a somewhat more uncomfortable affair than he’d previously anticipated given that he still had the taste of that mystery spice in his mouth. Sergeant accepted that Ren was relaying an order from Poe easily enough, standing with no more than his usual grimace to find a couple of unfortunates for the task. Finn and Poe were talking quietly when Ren approached, scanners out, and turned to include him immediately.

“We’ve been checking where Hux will think we’re going,” Poe said, waving at his scanner screen as Ren handed Finn his pack. “I’ve kept track of every tunnel entrance and exit we’ve used today and Finn’s used them to plot our projected course the same way First Order algorithms do. Now, if Hux really is planning an ambush his line’s going to be stretched between us and the Falcon somewhere in here,” he narrated, waving a hand along a broad swath of empty forest. “Luckily they still won’t be able to use whatever long-range scanners they’ve got outside the canopy, but we can bet that the ground troops they have are going to be doing everything they can to set up wide perimeters that will let them know we’re coming.”

“We’ll start from the nearest point within their likely route and travel down it, as far as you need to go to sense whether or not they’re there or if we’ll be able to get through,” Finn continued. “Simple in and out.” Ren nodded just as the two new guards came up behind them to take their posts, one still yawning until he saw Poe, then hastily trying to pretend like he hadn’t been.

“No more than two or three hours out,” Poe directed. “Just enough to assess what we’ve got in front of us and report back. Any more than that, we’ll find another way around and hope we meet you at the Falcon. May the Force be with both of you.”

“And with all of you,” Finn answered for both of them, and he and Ren headed out into the darkness of the waiting forest.


	17. Ren and Finn discover the First Order's new strategy

Finn and Ren moved quickly and quietly, using only their dim walking lights to see the way, Ren spreading out his senses as far as they would go. When they encountered a muddy patch underneath the trees they hesitated, glancing at each other.

“Grime up,” Finn said, and they both knelt down to smear the mud across their faces. It was cold and gritty but at least slime-free, and stuck to the skin well due to a small amount of clay that made it tacky. Finn had more work to do than Ren, covering the portions of his lighter-colored uniform where the grime from earlier in the day had dried and rubbed or flaked off while Ren made sure to similarly camouflage his pack. They checked each other before moving out, then continued on. 

The forest sounds that had been so prevalent near the tunnel had all but disappeared by the time Ren sensed the first patrol, speeders flying in a routine perimeter pattern, advancing on them very quickly. He stopped and turned to Finn, sweeping both hands forward, palm down, until they covered each other, then pointing ahead and right: 'airborne enemy, from that direction'. Finn nodded as they both switched off their lights and went to ground at the base of the nearest plant, staying in the shadow of the stalk, close enough that they could still communicate beneath the cover of the ground foliage. Finn moved into Ren's field of vision and showed one extended finger Ren could just barely see in the darkness, then two: 'how many'? Ren showed him two fingers in answer and by then the two speeders were upon them, streaking past at pursuit speed but not in the right direction to be after the Rebels, disappearing back into the darkness as quickly as they'd come. Ren waited for a moment to see if he'd sense anything else but soon enough they'd passed out of his Force sense range. He stood and Finn followed him, looking around then tapping his forearm with three fingers: 'any other enemies?' Ren concentrated briefly then shook his head.

“Way too fast,” Finn whispered as quietly as possible, nodding in the direction they'd gone. “Not a patrol?”

“Patrol pattern,” Ren responded briefly, starting to get an idea of why the regular patrol speed had been increased so dramatically. “It's because I'm with you.”

“Trying to sneak up on the Rebels too fast for your Force sense to be able to compensate,” Finn said, nodding. “Smart.”

“Risky. If we do manage to get under cover they'll miss us every time.”

“Yeah, but we have to get under cover every time.”

There was no denying that. They stayed still for a minute, listening, then moved on. Two more patrols at the same speed passed them by; each time they had to go to ground. At least they didn't have to wait very long to move on again, but each time made Ren grimly appreciate how hard it would be to get a larger group of people, even one as comparatively on edge and action-ready as the Rebels, under cover in time. All it took was one poorly concealed pack or helmet and they'd all be caught.

They continued on in silence for a while after that without seeing anyone, apparently past the leading edge of whatever perimeter Hux had set, before Ren started to sense a worrying amount of motion on their right and ahead, not directly between them and the Falcon but close enough that he waved Finn to a stop and paced for a moment, trying to hone in on exactly what it was. Finn, in the meantime, took out his sensor and tried to expand its reach as far as it would go, but whatever Ren was feeling it wasn't in sensor range yet, especially not with the interference from the canopy plants.

“You got it yet?” Finn asked after a very long wait in which Ren said nothing to him but continued to pace.

“No,” Ren said shortly, which wasn't entirely true. Using Force sense at such a distance muddied the waters of what the Force could communicate to him, much like seeing something in his peripheral vision. Even so there was a certain immensity to the feeling, as though he'd found the foothills of what would prove to be a mountain but the mountain itself was still unknowable, far beyond his reach.

“We're running the clock,” Finn reminded him. 

“Yes.” There was no hope for it; they'd have to continue on at least until he could parse out what he was feeling. “Forward. Hand signs only.”

They continued on, but with every step Ren could only feel more immensity, more distant and indistinct turmoil in the Force that still had neither name nor face, but was already making him restless. Finn kept his scanner out as they made their way forward but kept his eye on the time too, and it wasn't that much longer before he tapped Ren on the arm and clasped his hands together against his chest: 'retreat'. Ren hesitated, looking over his shoulder toward where they were headed. He had a terrible but utterly certain feeling that they had to know what was still just beyond him, that not pursuing it now would invite disaster. 

He turned back to Finn, tapping his heel and then holding up one finger followed by making two circles with his curled fingers, one after the other: 'one hundred more paces'. Finn nodded, and they continued on, but they'd barely gone thirty paces before Ren stopped dead, reaching in his mind. He circled his finger and thumb around his right arm so Finn could see- 'enemy'- but couldn't do anything more than that to communicate what he was suddenly aware of. The feeling, the immense feeling he'd been trying to grab onto was finally manifesting clearly in his mind, and it felt overwhelmingly like death. Not just the death of a small group at once, like he and the Rebels had been accomplishing all day as they laid traps for search parties; this was death on a colossal and severely immediate scale, like a battle, something he'd felt only rarely and never to this extent. The feeling of the First Order was also rife but not as though they were the ones dying, and he couldn't comprehend who they could be fighting that would result in this kind of disturbance. Even the Rebels-- and for a moment of panic he reached into the bond, but Rey still felt steady and calm, and there was no chance an attack of this scale could have happened in the time since they'd left anyway. 

He motioned to Finn again after a long and tense moment, continuing forward but at a crouch, glancing at Finn's sensor. The screen showed a large something at its edge, but could give no clues as to what it was. They snuck through the forest together, counting out another seventy paces as the line of turmoil on Finn's screen grew clearer, resolving into many, many separate people and larger entities that were undoubtedly either transports or some other kind of machine. The front line of the expansive force seemed to fizz and flicker, and by their one hundredth pace they could see it in front of them, as the far-off gloom was interrupted by incredibly thin lines of molten orange light, dancing in and out of view, surrounded by the pinpricks of white light that would be the torches mounted on stormtrooper helmets and blasters. They both went to ground without needing to communicate about it, Finn crawling to Ren's left shoulder to stay level with him. 

A line of orange appeared and disappeared. There seemed to be some sort of sway in the Force, as though something teetered then fell, something huge and heavy, crashing to the ground so loudly they could hear it at this distance. It happened twice more in quick succession, and Ren realized several things at once. The death he was feeling was not living beings as he'd imagined them, but the great plants that created the canopy above, being felled by the First Order. They were being cut down at an incredible rate; and they were, to at least some extent, sentient. 

Ren turned to Finn, clasping his hands just under his chin so Finn could see- 'retreat'- then rose to a crouch, turning away with Finn just behind him. He didn't know how much Finn had been able to understand of what they'd seen, or how much the scanner had picked up, but he didn't have time to worry about what the former stormtrooper did or didn't know, increasing their pace to ground-eating strides as he realized that the line of death now continued farther than it had when they'd approached it, threatening to cut them off from the Rebels at this rate. Hux had nearly gotten their trajectory exactly right; if he'd shifted his angle by less than ten degrees they would have been coming up on the tunnel where the Rebels were hidden within minutes.

The patrols came from behind this time, faster than he'd expected, more than there were before. If before they had been at pursuit speed now they flew at what must be the upper limit of what their speeders were capable of, the whine of their approach nearly as much warning of their presence as even his Force sense could give them. More than once he was certain that it was their coating of camouflage grime that saved them as they lay face-down in the brush and let the patrols go past overhead; that and the darkness. In the middle of the day they would have stood no chance of remaining undetected. The interruptions were tense but survivable for just him and Finn alone, but far worse was the moving First Order front in his mind, coming up on them at a relentless, punishing speed, and by extension nearing where the Rebels were hidden as well. The next time the patrols went past he paused a moment after getting up to sign to Finn that there were enemies on their flank, to which Finn nodded and responded by tapping three fingers just below his right bicep- 'leader'- then pointing at his screen. The line was just barely visible at the edge of the sensor, still swaying and bending under the abrupt and powerful electrical impulses of the dying vegetation, but a distinct separate wedge shape had appeared within it, probably indicating the nearest ranking officer.

They continued on, getting closer and closer to where the Rebels were waiting but having to go to ground over and over again. It was almost as though the patrols meant to keep them down, slowing their progress forward to a crawl, and as the speeders circled more and more tightly into a search formation Ren realized that was exactly what they were doing. Somehow, some way, they knew that their lines had been breached and were searching for the intruders. At this rate they'd find them, too.

He hid himself at the base of a tree, pressing a hand against it, concentrating as Finn laid flat in the growth next to him, waiting for yet another pair of speeders to pass by. Ren hadn't thought before to pay too much attention to the canopy plants, other than to be grateful that they provided cover from the air support undoubtedly searching for them, but that same good fortune was undoubtedly why they were being destroyed now; Hux was creating a killing ground, an impassable swath of emptiness the Rebels would never be able to cross without being spotted and cornered. The plant knew it too, he could feel it under his palm, as well as he could feel the plant's grief and the slow, palpable unease as the line of desecration come so close. It didn't have the complex thought required to understand exactly why this was happening- that two groups of foreign beings had invaded its home, one pursuing the other- but it knew that many of its fellows had died and that it was probably going to die too. Ren felt for it but couldn't do a thing to stop what was coming and drew his hand away, wishing he could show some sort of respect to this sad and doomed being. Finn was signing to him already as he looked, pointing urgently at the screen of his sensor. The wedge had shifted course; the officer now headed almost directly toward them. Ren nodded and reached for the sensor, which Finn gave him, switching it over to a map of the surrounding area to confirm what he'd already sought out in the Force. They probably only had time for one more run, but one was all they needed.

“They're going to find us,” he said, turning to Finn, tapping the screen to show him the tunnel opening he'd chosen, not bothering with hand signs now that their fate seemed rather depressingly inevitable. “We might have enough time to go to ground here.”

“Okay,” Finn said slowly, checking the map against where they were. “This tunnel doesn't go anywhere, though.”

“At this point it's that or give ourselves up,” Ren sighed, standing in the shadow of the tree, checking the blasters strapped to his thighs. The plants had transmitted some of their despair to him, he felt, some sort of helpless sense of impending doom, as though what was coming was something that he couldn't run from. Two more speeders zoomed past, at the wrong angle to discover him now, but that wouldn't be the case much longer. 

Rey, he thought at the bond. It was too far to send the word still, but he sent as much urgency as he could muster, as much as he had left. By now he and Finn were past the three hours Poe had given them to be out; the Rebels would already be deciding whether to wait a little longer or leave them behind. He knew the choice they had to make but not how to communicate what had been found, what they faced. He pushed the sadness at her too, the heavy and crushing sense of death, and his fear for her, always, always, his fear for her, threaded through the Force like roots through soil. It was all he had time for. It would have to be enough.

Finn had stood up next to him, and just as he put his scanner away and pulled his blaster out instead Ren caught one last glimpse of the screen, of the wedge almost on top of them, the speeders bearing down from every side. He hardly needed the visual, or even his Force sense at this point; they were surrounded by the dancing lights of the First Order, white and merciless, and would be found at this rate sooner rather than later. He stepped into the open, making sure he lined up with the tunnel mouth hidden somewhere behind him. The lights caught, across his legs, his chest, as Finn stepped out too, lining up at his left shoulder.

“Supreme Leader,” a familiar voice said as the wedge of stormtroopers stopped before him, the front line kneeling, their blasters trained on his chest. Their movement revealed the hoversled they'd been escorting behind them as it lowered itself to the ground with a hiss, allowing Hux to step down, his gloves in his hands, wringing them as though he thought the humidity of the planet's surface had ruined the spotless black leather already. He let go with one hand only to wave it over his shoulder impatiently, and in the distance the clear-cutting ground to a halt.

“General Hux,” Ren said evenly in the sudden, deafening silent. “Having second thoughts about your coup?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The 17th chapter, finally!! I don't know if you guys have an arbitrary mental threshold you hold online fics to, but for me seventeen chapters is what I like to see before I take a fic seriously. After that I just assume the author is too invested to simply abandon it. Somehow it's become the standard I hold myself to as a writer as well :) 
> 
> Tumblr:
> 
> https://how-do-i-turn-this-thing-off.tumblr.com/


	18. Rey and the Rebels, on the run again

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Warned by Ben that something bad is happening on the surface, Rey and the Rebels make a break for it

No matter how hard Rey concentrated it was impossible to tell what Ben himself was feeling when he was like this. She wasn’t even sure he was aware he was doing it at all when he just pushed certain things at her, a heady rush that permeated the bond, soaking the part of her mind that was aware of him with impressions but no real substance. She frowned, pushing back into the mess, trying to make it make sense, but there was no rational pattern to it, no anchor to grab hold of, just a slurry of dread, grief, apprehension, and a pressing concern for her like a ceaseless chord playing over and over in the rest of the cacophony.

She kept her eyes closed and her head down a moment longer, fingering the hilt of Ben’s lightsaber where it hung from her belt, the same place her own lightsaber had occupied before they’d destroyed it. His felt different in every way- heavier, larger, the lateral vents of the crossguard bumping against the side of her leg when she moved- but there was a very Ben feeling to it as well, something comforting in the midst of the unfamiliar, something to hold on to when the entire Rebel group was standing waiting on her, as she could feel them doing now. When she finally did look up Poe was studying her, not in an unsympathetic way but more as though he knew exactly what she was feeling because it was something he felt himself, often.

“What’s the word?” he asked softly, scanner in hand. “Stay or go?”

She knew the answer, probably the one thing that had echoed clearly in Ben’s feeling in the bond, and it would be a betrayal to him to pretend anything else, but she still hesitated before shaking her head. “Go,” she said. “But not up top. We need to stay out of sight.”

“Out of sight?” he repeated, looking down at his screen. “In the tunnels? There’s not a direct tunnel between here and the Falcon for miles.”

She shook her head at the screen, frowning. “We have to, Poe. I don’t know how to say it but we do.”

He sighed, long and hard before turning to the rest of the Rebels. “Alright guys, it’s going to be tunnels for a while. We don’t have a route planned, we’re just trying to get out of the way of whatever Finn and Ren are seeing up top. Everyone with a scanner, get it out and start checking the map in all directions, see if you can find some path forward, big or small. Will they be in the tunnels?” he asked, turning to Rey.

“Probably,” she said. “I don’t know.”

He nodded, all but pushing her forward into the tunnel they were in now, farther in, down a gradual slope, the uneven floor showing up as bands of shadow in the beams of their lights. “Well, we’ll deal with it if it does happen.”

“Poe–,” she said, turning towards him, not sure if she should admit to her doubt, but he must have read it in her expression because he shook his head, immediately cutting her off.

“No, we’re not doing that,” he said, his voice just low enough that even the Rebels directly behind them wouldn’t be able to hear. “No second-guessing tonight, alright? Rigth now we need to get as far as we can as quickly as we can before we have to either find somewhere to hole up or make a run for a completely different spot than we’ve got now, and both ways I need you looking sharp.”

“I’m still unsteady,” she said anyway, keeping her eyes forward, her hand on the lightsaber hilt.

“Well, Ren said you could do it, and I believed him,” Poe said, his tone neutral. “And he wouldn’t have lied about that, not if it’s you on the line. You’ve got his sword and we’ve got his word. That’s going to have to be enough to see us through. Plus it’s not like you’re alone, you know?” he pointed out, patting the blaster on his hip. “And I’m not half bad with this thing. You just give us the signal, and we’ll take care of it.”

They fell silent as she went forward, not sure whether or not she could count on Poe’s bravado to actually bear out, deliberately resisting searching his feelings, afraid what she might find. If he really did doubt her he was hiding it well now, and it was difficult to concentrate so much on his feelings anyway when she had Ben’s in her head already. She was so distracted trying to parse through what she was sensing in the bond that she didn’t sense the First Order patrol until they were already on the screen, Poe whispering back along the line to get ready and go quietly. She instantly chided herself and spread her Force sense out, carefully keeping track of where they were as well as the other tunnels around them. They were empty; only these three soldiers were in the way.

“Didn’t expect to meet anyone so soon,” Poe muttered, almost to himself, and Rey nodded absently, looking down the tunnel behind them. There was a feeling inside her she couldn’t identify, maybe Force, maybe instinct, maybe both, worrying at her as though there was something she was supposed to have already realized and she was just being a bit slow off the mark.

“Poe,” she said, “what do we do?”

“What we always do. Take ‘em out, run for it.”

But that would give away their position. She wanted to say it but held back, sure he’d thought of that, equally sure that he must have decided it didn’t matter. The only other thing they could possibly do was turn around and go back up the tunnel ahead of the patrol and out to the surface, an option she herself had already strongly warned against and still believed would put them in worse danger than they would be in now.

Ben. It wouldn’t reach him- she could feel in some indefinite way that he was out of range, and besides if he could have been speaking to her surely he would have by now- but it helped to think it, helped to imagine he was on the other end of the invisible string, something she could grab on to when she needed it, something more than just herself to rely on. And it really was something she relied on, which made her smile now, as it did so often; he’d been such an enigma, such a scary thing, while he was Kylo Ren.

While he was Kylo Ren. Something about that jogged her memory so she played it over again in her mind, remembering meeting him, the odd interrogation that had been more about her than what he’d said he wanted, remembering escaping. Remembering escaping.

“Stop,” she gasped out, throwing an arm sideways to catch Poe across the chest, looking back. The Rebels noticed and stumbled to a halt as well, one after the other, watching her. “Everyone against the walls,” she whispered, drawing the lightsaber. She hoped she wouldn’t have to use it. She was almost sure she wouldn’t have to use it.

“What’s the plan, Rey?” Poe asked guardedly, glancing down at the lightsaber.

“I can make them not see us,” she said. “I can make them walk right past and not even know we’re here.”

“With the Force? Are you sure?”

“Yes,” she lied. She was… kind of sure. Mostly sure. “It doesn’t take that much energy. If everyone stays quiet I should be able to.”

“I don’t think that will be a problem,” Poe muttered, looking the other Rebels over before going to the wall himself, leaving Rey standing alone in the middle of the tunnel. She breathed, reaching for her center, which was still unsteady. After a moment she reached for the bond instead, which never was.

Ben. The First Order stormtroopers were coming closer, almost upon them. She sent him feelings of reassurance, of confidence, of determination. Not fear. Not doubt. She wouldn’t. She couldn’t. It might panic him, or at least distract him, and who knew how that might turn out if he found himself in a situation where he needed to focus. She breathed, using the surety of the bond, the strength of the man on the other end. In the tunnel, the First Order stormtroopers came into view.

“There’s nothing in this tunnel,” she murmured, raising a hand, feeling the Force flowing through her, around her. Just a little; just a touch. She wasn’t trying to batter. Just persuade. The stormtroopers didn’t seem to have spotted her yet, which was odd; they weren’t that far away. “Just another empty tunnel,” she murmured, waving her hand in a slow arc through the air, like she was wiping something away. “Nothing here.”

“Another empty tunnel,” one of the stormtroopers said just as the trio reached her and passed by, two of them on her left, one on her right.

“Nothing here,” another responded, almost eerily. Rey turned slowly to watch them, keeping her hand raised, the Force strong in her. The Rebels pressed themselves against the walls but they almost needn’t have taken so much care; as the stormtroopers passed they adjusted course naturally to allow for the more constricted area, as if it wasn’t people blocking their way but the walls of the tunnel itself. In what felt like a very long moment but was probably only a few seconds, they had moved on, then passed out of sight entirely.

The Rebels sighed quietly in relief, falling back into line, Poe stepping up beside Rey, his face lined with surprising tension, given how well her ploy seemed to have worked. “How was that?” he asked.

“Good. I don’t think they suspected anything.”

“No, I meant how are you? Are you okay? Everything good?”

“I’m fine,” she reassured him, smiling as she clipped the saber back to her belt. “It took even less Force than I thought it would.”

“As long as you’re okay, Rey,” Poe said, starting down the tunnel again, scanner out. “Don’t screw around with me again. We can shoot our way through if we need to.”

“We won’t need to, Poe,” she said, simultaneously conveying what she could of her success to Ben- real confidence this time, and reassurance, and relief. His lightsaber bumped along at her side, as solid and as steady as he was, as she was able to be with his help. “I’ll get us through.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There are some action scenes on deck, yes, and that's going to be interesting because action isn't usually where I sit. Not that I can't- I have- but I don't dwell, you know? I'd rather deal with the emotional turmoil and whatnot, but we can't do that all the time, and it is called Star WARS for a reason.
> 
> If you're jonesing for more Reylo goodness I've also been busy elsewhere: my other series, Tag Galaxy, has been updated and is probably going to be updated again pretty soon, and I've also done a oneshot based on a prompt someone sent me that I ended up calling 'Slinger & Stars: A Reylo Proposal', which was very fun but WOW, not what I expected to end up writing at all lol. Check them out if you like :)
> 
> My tumblr:
> 
> https://how-do-i-turn-this-thing-off.tumblr.com/


	19. Hux is attacked

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Things don't go as Hux planned. Honestly, when do they ever?

Ren and Hux studied each other for a long moment, a long moment in which Ren almost didn’t need the Force to feel the palpable tension all around them, the First Order leveling their guns at him more uncertainly than they had all day, waiting to see if they would be ordered to fire on him or not. It would almost give him some satisfaction to force Hux to give that order now, face to face, himself, except that Ren knew very well that was exactly what Hux wanted, regardless of any potential unrest he might face later as a result of the assassination.

“I’m not surprised to see a Rebel at your side,” Hux sneered, glancing at Finn, clearly not recognizing him as the former FN-2187. “I’ve suspected you’ve been working with them for a long while now, and finally we have the proof of it.”

“Do you?” Ren asked dispassionately, knowing it would only anger Hux more if he didn’t get worked up about it. “What proof is that? My alliance with them in the interest of foiling your attempts to kill me all day?”

“Your ‘alliance’ should never have been, under any circumstances,” Hux snarled, two splotches of color appearing high on his cheekbones. “If you’d wanted to prove your loyalties you should have executed them all yourself.”

“You’re going to lecture us about loyalty?” Finn said from Ren’s shoulder, his hands on his gun as steady as his nerves despite being heavily outnumbered. “Yeah, that sounds about right. It’s loyalty when everyone does whatever you want, and treason the moment you want to get rid of them.”

Hux glanced at Finn then back at Ren, motioning Finn’s direction with his twisted gloves. “And now you let them speak for you.”

“And he lets us shoot for him, too,” Finn said. “Which is why he’s still alive, and why so many of your guys are dead, not that that’s going to keep you up at night. How many search parties did you lose sweeping for us today? How many stormtroopers did you keep sending, even when the first ones didn’t come back?”

“I won’t have my methods questioned by–.”

“By one of your former lackeys?” Finn interrupted, his fingers tightening on his weapon almost imperceptibly as he threw out the challenge. “You don’t even know who I am, do you? We’ve met, General. There was a time I worked for you.” Hux stared, his eyes narrowing, the gloves in his hands twisted so tightly the leather creaked. “Yeah, I thought so,” Finn said. “I’m guessing you told them FN-2187 died somehow, or went missing. You didn’t even know me well enough to recognize me when you’re staring down the barrel of my gun.”

Someone gasped, an almost inaudible sound behind one of the stormtrooper masks, and Ren glanced around, curious. One of the guards next to the hovercraft shifted, leaning slightly out of formation to see Finn better, a guard with a compression bandage just visible around his wrist.

“Another traitor,” Hux hissed, looking between Ren and Finn with contempt. “So, this is how you did it. FN-2187 defected on your orders and embedded himself with the Rebels so that you could begin your secret involvement with them.”

“To what end?” Ren asked, almost curious what twist of Hux’s mind he would use to pull off this logic.

“To overthrow the First Order.”

“I lead the First Order. Why would I undermine it?” Ren pointed out.

“The same reason all corrupt men betray their fellows. Greed and lust for power.” Ren could only shake his head at that, but Hux was nowhere near finished. “I’ve watched you from the beginning, since Snoke brought you into the fold and took over your training, Ben Solo,” he said, putting unpleasant emphasis on the name. “I warned him many times that you could not be trusted, that you were unpredictable, undisciplined, ungoverned by the First Order’s mission to regain control of a galaxy spiraling into chaos. You did not- DO not- have the capacity to devote yourself entirely to anything that didn’t suit your own ends, and it was clear from the beginning. Your betrayal runs more deeply than anyone knows; you conspired with the Jedi girl to kill Snoke and his guards and helped her escape, making yourself Supreme Leader in his place. Now you finally bring your precious Rebels into the fold, your mother’s own soldiers, to complete the takeover you’ve longed for from the beginning.”

“So that I can, what, lead both the First Order and the Rebels?” Ren asked sarcastically, and Hux’s face went abruptly sallow with rage. He was just inventing all of this on the spot for the benefit of their audience, but didn’t seem to have followed his own lies through to their obvious conclusion.

“I will never let that happen,” Hux sputtered. In the bond Ren felt Rey sending him reassurance, coupled with confidence and an overwhelming need not to distract him, which was in itself a bit distracting and nearly made him smile, despite his own predicament at the moment. If the map and his Force sense could be trusted the entrance to the nearest tunnel was less than two dozen paces behind them, but he hadn’t anticipated quite this much firepower, and he’d forgotten momentarily that he was armed with only two blasters himself. Even with his lightsaber it would be difficult, but without it–.

“General, I strongly recommend you retire any ideas you have of leading the First Order yourself,” Ren said, purely to buy time and keep Hux distracted from an imminent execution rather than because he actually thought there was any likelihood at the moment that he could talk his way out of this. “You’re the one distracted by greed and power. Snoke may have tolerated your proficiency for killing without cause and getting your men killed equally needlessly, but I didn’t know your father and have far less patience with you grasping at the reins of a position you neither understand nor deserve.”

“While you spin your glowing sword around and slap your most highly decorated officers into walls,” Hux snarled, almost certainly referring to himself since Ren couldn’t remember doing that to anyone else. “Your pathetic Force wizardry is no match for real military aptitude and intelligent leadership. As soon as I’ve finished with you I’ll embargo this planet and put every spare soldier we have on it to blast the tattered and ridiculous Rebels that are left to pieces, if I don’t simply wait until we have another Starkiller at our disposal with which to reduce this planet to a meteor field.”

Ben couldn’t help but flinch as Hux spoke, a small gesture but one he knew Hux would see, though he’d probably misinterpret it. Ben had lived with Hux for years and was used to such speeches, but the idea that he would continue to attack this planet and the defenseless beings that lived here seemed more egregious somehow than the usual comments about blasting the Rebels to pieces. Even now he could see the plants just on the edge of being devoured by the oncoming Rebel line leaning away as though to escape the plasma blades that could be fired up again at any moment.

He blinked, looking again. He wasn’t seeing things; the plants were physically leaning away, setting their great wedge-shaped canopy askew, some bending so far backward they’d begun to tear the edge of their roots out of the ground.

“I assume you have grand plans for the First Order, now that you’ll have absolute control of everything?” Ren asked, his mind working quickly. “Plans that would dwarf my own and perhaps even Snoke’s.”

“I would never say such a thing about our true Supreme Leader,” Hux said, eyes lighting with malevolent glee at the other half of the suggestion. “But your intentions would have made us soft, vulnerable, easily dismantled by those waste rats who always hide on the outskirts of society, waiting to see us fall.” He continued in the same vein as Ren knew he would- Hux never missed a chance to try and make himself sound more grandiose than he was- but Ren was no longer paying attention, instead focusing in the Force and reaching again into the plant he’d touched earlier. Its sadness and uncertainty were still there, but so too was its greater connection to all the forest around it. The natural electrical current flowing through it made the plants a living network, giving them communication and, so it seemed, some limited ability to move as well.

He opened his own consciousness to the plant, allowing it to know him. For a moment the plant didn’t understand what was happening, and Ren sent it feelings of sympathy, identifying himself as one of the small beings on the ground. It was difficult to get the concept across- the plants didn’t pay too much attention to non-plant beings- but he marked himself out using the common medium of the Force and finally the plants took notice of him and the others around him and so, too, did all the other plants, far past the extent to which he could stretch his senses.

The revelation of Ren’s existence and his ability to communicate was a novelty and for a moment the plant’s curiosity outweighed its other concerns. It was a delicate business; he needed to identify himself as the same kind of being that was destroying their fellows, but not one of the beings responsible. Fortunately the plant didn’t seem to have complex enough understanding of non-plants to harbor such a thing as suspicion, so when he began to make distinctions between himself and others it went along with it entirely. Then he pointed out Hux.

This is the one, he thought, inasmuch as verbal thoughts would do him any good in this type of speech. He’s the one killing you. Ren picked Hux out in the Force, lighting him up within the plant’s consciousness, like painting a target on his back. The plant’s consciousness swiveled in its turn, focusing on the General. All around him the other plants swiveled too, and glancing up Ren saw the plants above him begin to lean in, as though to examine their little group. Others didn’t notice, especially not Hux, who was still in full flow about his many and innumerable improvements he was going to make to the First Order once it was his. Ren hoped Finn was listening closely, in case Hux said anything revelatory, since his attention was elsewhere.

Word spread quickly through this flora’s electric network, and soon every plant within range of Ren’s Force sense had turned their attention towards him and Hux, examining them both. A pulse of confusion and rage swept through their ranks; they wanted to know why Hux was doing what he was doing. Ren had no good answer for that, so he tried as much as he could to convey that Hux considered other beings lesser and all life expendable. The rage around him began to wax stronger and stronger, filling the plants until it seemed as though even non-sensitives should have known something was happening, as the forest went deathly quiet except for the creaks of giant trunks, bearing down, as the plants themselves began to move.

“Get ready,” Ren said aloud to Finn.

“I– what?” Hux said, stumbling to a verbal halt, eyeing Ren suspiciously.

“I said get ready,” Ren said, not bothering to try and hide what was coming as he felt the tide of anger surging and surging again around him, rising in the Force like a pot about to boil over. There was no need to disguise it; it was already inevitable.

“Is there some great miracle we should be expecting?” Hux said sarcastically, looking around in an exaggerated fashion as though to point out to Ren how completely surrounded he and Finn still were, how heavily outnumbered. “Some more magic tricks you’ve got up your traitorous sleeve?” Above them the canopy began to tilt inwards, dust and small particles of leaf reining down.

“Stay close,” Ren said, grabbing Finn by the arm just above the elbow. Finn looked at him in confusion, then looked up, as every other stormtrooper and Hux himself were looking up.

Pow. A blaster sounded, narrowly missing Hux as a stormtrooper unwittingly got in the way, taking the shot on his shoulder when it would have struck Hux in the back. Everyone glanced back down, looking at the wounded stormtrooper in surprise. Then there was a sound almost like a wooden scream, like something being torn apart bit by bit, accompanied by a terrific snapping as though of ropes splitting under great pressure, and the plant Ren had originally been talking to fell, aiming for Hux. Ren leapt back, hand still on Finn’s arm, as the plant hit the ground hard enough to shake it, smashing several stormtroopers and at least four speeders, throwing everyone else off their feet as all hell broke loose.

The canopy was falling, not directly down but in great scything arcs as all around them the forest uprooted itself. In the Force Ren could hear their screams of pain and rage as they fell, sacrificing themselves in an attempt to kill the thing wounding them, paying no attention to the other soldiers who got in the way. It took all his skill in the Force to anticipate them as the ground continued to shake from blow after terrific blow, dragging Finn along and backwards as Hux shouted orders and the stormtroopers swarmed in confusion. In the few glimpses Ren got of the First Order line he could see white-armored people running to and fro as gigantic clear-cutting machines crumpled beneath the onslaught, an occasional burst of flame blossoming under the destruction. The plants were beyond Ren now, the ferocity of their wrath blotting out every other concern as they continued to topple all around them, cutting off every potential path of escape.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Original tumblr A/N: an appropriate alternate title of this work could have been ‘Hux: Master of Projection’, since he throws more stones than anyone who lives in a glass house that fragile should ever have to hand. Talk about inferiority complex
> 
> My tumblr:
> 
> https://how-do-i-turn-this-thing-off.tumblr.com/


	20. The earthquake, the tunnels

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Yes, you forgot that this would also put the Rebels in serious danger, didn't you? ;)

They were traveling deeper and deeper into the tunnels, still trying to find one that led roughly the way they needed to go, when Rey stopped dead. She’d been keeping her Force sense spread wide and so far had only had to get into the minds of one other set of stormtroopers, having been able to avoid the patrols for the most part. But now, however, her sense was telling her something new, something above ground and not below it, the ripples of a seething, teeming rage spreading outward from an unknown source.

“Problem?” Poe asked, watching her as the rest of the Rebels ground to a halt.

“I’m not sure,” Rey said, closing her eyes, stretching out her hand as though she could physically stretch her senses with it.

“Ren?”

“No.” No, it wasn’t Ben but Ben’s feeling in the bond seemed to align with it, or echo it, she wasn’t sure which was more accurate. She pushed harder, upwards, trying to understand.

“We should go,” she said slowly. “Down. We should go down.”

“Okay,” Poe agreed without question, fiddling with something on his scanner. “How much time do we have?”

Minutes, Rey almost said, but something stopped her as the swell of feeling above her head grew exponentially. There was a shiver, then a shake, not just in the Force but in real life, and the tunnel vibrated extremely softly, just enough to shake some loose dirt from the roof. “We need to go now,” Rey said, diving her sense down, spreading it out again with an urgency she hadn’t been feeling a moment ago but that now seemed to heap itself upon her, speeding her forward. She found a tunnel going down, a tunnel that led the wrong direction but at this point she didn’t care.

“This way,” she said, opening her physical eyes, letting the Force show her the way. She started at a trot but from above the shaking continued, mounting, spreading, the surface devolving into chaos far beyond her ability to examine or comprehend. She broke into a run and above- directly above- an almighty collision on the surface shook the tunnel with a thump like they were inside a giant, muffled drum. A rock fell loose from the ceiling, narrowly missing the Rebels, and now they were all running.

Rey had rarely if ever felt fear quite like this. There was a sort of restrained panic within her, struggling to break free, struggling to give wings to her feet, to send her shooting ahead as fast as she could go, but she stayed with the Rebels, leading them on. The whole world began to shudder continuously, swaying and bucking under their feet; a tunnel off to the side collapsed completely, and the way dirt was now showering down on them now it didn’t feel as though their tunnel was too far behind.

“Here!” Rey shouted, finding the junction they needed and pulling a hard right. Poe slowed immediately, staying at the turn to direct anyone who was lagging behind and might otherwise miss it; now it was Rey leading the Rebels on her own. Her panic grew another increment, threatening to overwhelm her sense, and she clapped a hand to Ren’s lightsaber, bumping against her leg with every stride. It was reassuring just to have it and helped her cut through the proverbial noise, finding her footing, the bond as her center. Ben. On an impulse she discarded her lamp completely, tossing it to the side, and drew the saber, hitting the switch to power the blade. It shot into being, burning terribly red and bright against the darkness they were descending into, and Rey held it high so those behind her would be able to see where to go as they came to another intersection, then another, so many tunnels large and small branching away into the dark that even with the Force she lost track of which direction they were headed after each successive turn.

Finally the shaking began to subside and she slowed to a jog, feeling, feeling, as much as she could now that they were so far below ground. At this distance it was difficult to tell what was going on but the swell of danger seemed to have abated, and after a few long, torturous aftershocks, distant enough that Rey could slow back to a walk, the feeling subsided altogether, and the sense of danger withdrew.

“It’s past,” Rey told Poe as he pushed his way up to the front of the queue to see what the hold up was. “Whatever it was. It’s over.”

“You’re sure?” Poe asked, and she nodded. “I was at the back,” he explained, though she knew that already. “We didn’t lose anyone, as far as I saw. I’ll call a sound-off. Good job, using that thing,” he added, glancing at the lightsaber still burning at Rey’s side. “I’d still rather you had one of your own though.”

Rey smiled tiredly, looking over at the other Rebels. Everyone looked much worse for the wear, both from the surprise sprint and from the fear as the earth had collapsed around them. It was a tiring life, the Rebellion, and not one that gave those who chose to live it a single inch at any time. She was glad they’d rested when they had– she was glad Ben’s plan had been structured to allow them extended breaks throughout the day. At the time it had meant their progress forward was stilted and sometimes torturous, but tonight it had been their salvation.

Poe returned, and she saw him as she hadn’t before, shadows under his eyes, dirt and sweat streaked equally across his skin, his feeling in the Force stalwart but fading imperceptibly, much like the people he led. “Everyone made it,” he reported. “Any idea what the hell it was we were running from?”

“Something happened. Something big,” Rey said helplessly, knowing that that was fairly evident already but not sure how else to describe it. “Something very big got very angry.”

“Some kind of new weapon from the First Order, or something they brought with them…?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Ren? Finn?”

“Fine.” She’d feel it in the Force, if anything had happened to them; even if she didn’t have at least a basic sense of Finn, she knew Ben would react if Finn died, and she’d feel that for sure.

“Well, we’ve screwed ourselves pretty good now,” Poe said, trying to get a reading from his scanner. This deeply underground the tunnels were aligned all differently, and black gaps showed areas the scanner’s maps either didn’t know about yet or the scanner itself wasn’t able to read. “Partial maps,” Poe muttered. “Great.”

“That’s water,” Rey said, pointing to a large open space, only the edge of which the map indicated but that she could feel now. “Not too far away. Might be fresh?”

“This far underground it should be,” he agreed. “We should take ten here, though. Everyone needs it.”

Rey nodded, not adding that Poe needed it too. She felt alright, surprisingly. Something about having that much panic in her, both from within and without, then having it suddenly lift away, had left her with a peculiar euphoria. Clearly it was not a euphoria the Rebels shared; as they settled down to rest Rey could feel their emotions fluctuating, tears streaking more than one exhausted face, as much from fatigue as from fear and relief. Rose came and found her, also crying, and hugged Rey without a word. She didn’t need to speak; Rey could feel the fear that was still in her and could guess exactly what was causing it.

“Finn’s alright, Rose,” she said into Rose’s hair as Rose’s arms tightened around her spasmodically. “I can feel him in the Force. He’s still alive.”

Rose breathed out, heavily, and her body shook with a sob so quiet that even in each other’s arms Rey couldn’t hear it. Just the one sob– then Rose managed to calm down, letting Rey go as they found a spot next to wall and squatted on the ground across from each other. It wasn’t the same without Ben and Finn here, but Poe came to join them and that made up for it a bit. They stayed silent, just breathing, composing themselves, preparing to go on. The place where the water was didn’t look far away but right now everything that wasn’t right in front of them seemed as though it was on the other side of an insurmountable distance.

All too soon Poe stood, and Rey made herself stand just after him. All up and down the tunnel quiet, almost involuntary groans sounded out as the Rebels got to their feet, but no one complained. In silence they assembled, pulling packs back on, helping each other adjust anything that had come loose and needed to be tightened, looking to Poe and Rey expectantly. Rey glanced at him and he nodded; without a word they turned and continued on. Rey had fished another light out of her pack to replace the one she’d tossed aside during their headlong dash- luckily there was plenty of spare gear available, after the day they’d had- and even this far down the tremors from above had shaken just a little soil loose here, cracked a layer of rock floor there. It was unsettling to see and she made herself ignore it, stamping the soil down when she could, as though she could blot out the evidence for the others. Their procession continued on, winding ever downward, and when they reached the cavernous room with the water they could only let out a tired sound of relief.

“This is camp for the night, guys,” Poe said just loudly enough to be heard as they made their way out along the subterranean beach. “Someone test the water and see if it’s good to drink. Anything you’ve got that’ll keep you warm and dry, don’t hesitate to use it. This far down there’s no chance the First Order will catch any signal off of us.” Done with his public announcements he turned to Rey, lowering his voice. “There’s nothing in there, right?” he asked, casting a slant-ways glance at the water. She couldn’t blame him; the water was smooth as glass and as dark as a starless night. This close their lights could show only the gently curving sandy bottom, disappearing quickly into the gloom. It was a little eerie, and the Rebels setting up camp left a generous space between themselves and the water’s edge, even though it forced them to range out a bit farther to find room. Rey reached out automatically, searching the subterranean lake, but everything within was just as still as it seemed.

“Nothing living,” she reported, then seeing Poe’s look of sudden apprehension added with a smile, “Rocks, Poe. Just rocks.”

“Yeah, just say that next time, okay?” he asked, shuddering for effect. “'Nothing living’. Yeesh.” Rey laughed softly, scanning the line for where Rose had ended up. She headed that way, Poe right behind her, glad to see that Rose was taking out a white First Order portable heater of some kind. It was kind of small and stark compared to the comfort of a fire, but it would do.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Original tumblr A/N: It’s always strange to write two characters that are experiencing the same thing, but in very different ways. Rey and Ren are kind of perfect for that, no?


	21. Ren and Finn are followed

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Someone follows Ren and Finn. I do try to give you descriptive chapter titles, you know. Pay attention

The trunks of the plants were too slippery to climb once they'd fallen over. Ren and Finn had tried a dozen times and in every instance the plants had denied them, sending them sliding hopelessly back to the ground. Their scaly bark, or maybe skin, had an mildly unpleasant soapy texture that made them impossible to grip, and they were far too wide to get over any other way. They'd fallen on top of each other haphazardly, plants and leaves draped back and forth in every direction in a maze that was nearly impossible to navigate. By crawling through gaps left by trunks lying crosswise against other trunks Ren and Finn had managed to make it a little ways from where the First Order's line lay in ruins, but now the sun had only just risen and they were still close enough to hear some of the shouts and tearing of machines as the stormtroopers struggled to save the few plasma cutters undamaged enough to still function.

“Alright, this isn't good,” Finn decided, looking up and down as though trying to gauge the distance between the ground and what they needed to get over if they wanted to go any farther than they had.

“No,” Ren agreed, sitting on the broad beam that was the stem of a great leaf, now lying parallel to the forest floor.

“Nothing you can do, huh? No, like--.” He made a fluttery gesture with his hand, as if going up and over.

“Are you asking me if I can fly?”

“I mean, not necessarily. But can you?”

“No,” Ren said shortly. Increase the distance and height of his jumps, maybe, but not enough to get over this barrier from a standing start, much less the next one, and the next one, and the next one.

“I'm guessing you did something to the plants?” Finn continued. “Some sort of like, toppling effect or something?”

“I made them mad.”

Finn's jaw dropped and he stared at Ren as though waiting to see whether or not Ren was joking. Ren watched him back humorlessly, and slowly Finn's mouth closed. “Well, yeah, obviously,” he muttered, turning away and pacing the rough square of their enclosure. “Just made them mad. Just pissed them off til they knocked themselves over. That's how we do. Just gonna turn the whole planet against them.”

“If you're uncomfortable with it I'll tell you to close your eyes next time,” Ren said sarcastically.

“You're not going to piss these plants off, right?” Finn asked, pointing to the ones around them. “Because I don't want them to roll over on us or something.” 

“These plants are dead,” Ren said briefly, though it wasn't entirely true. The life force of these plants was at an incredibly low ebb but some of them still had at least a few roots connecting them to the earth, feeding a slow trickle of electrical impulse in and out. Given time, a few may even come back. Who knew? In investigating them, however, he discovered something else, something a bit more urgent than contemplating the life cycle of foreign flora. “Someone's coming,” he said, standing, a hand on one of his blasters.

“How many?” Finn asked, blaster already hoisted, coming back to Ren and aligning with his left shoulder as Ren turned back the way they'd come.

“Just one.”

“Easy, then.”

“We let off a blaster shot, the rest of the First Order will find us,” Ren reminded him.

“I'll take the left, you take the right,” Finn decided. “We'll choke him out. Well, I'll choke him out, anyway. If I can't get hold of him, you do the Force choking thing, yeah?” Without waiting for a reply he stepped off, heading forward to take up his new position. Ren split the other way, standing to the side of the only opening into the enclosure, the one they'd come through, partially obscured by a giant leaf draped across the gap between one toppled trunk and the next. They hadn't waited long before they could hear movement, someone scuffling in the downed vegetation, searching for a way through. Ren supposed they should be impressed anyone had managed to follow them at all, but he'd only been able to sense one route that went much further than past the first couple trunks, so with enough trial and error anyone would eventually end up here. It was not a comforting thought.

The leaf covering the gap shifted and Finn crouched, ready to leap at the person. At the last moment Ren threw out a hand to stop him, just as the stormtrooper's helmet emerged, the stormtrooper himself following, struggling forward on his stomach then looking up to see both Finn and Ren standing above him, one on either side, blasters pointed down and trained directly on his head. The stormtrooper raised his hands in the air as much as he could, looking, oddly enough, not at Ren but at Finn.

“FN-2187,” the stormtrooper said.

“That's my name,” Finn replied. “Or was. It's Finn now.” He looked at Ren, a clear question in his eyes: why had Ren called him off at the last minute?

“I recognize you,” Ren said to the stormtrooper, who twisted around to look at him, despite the sharp angle required that must have made his neck ache. “I recognize your feeling in the Force. Were you the one who shot at Hux?”

Finn's eyes widened and he looked down. The stormtrooper looked back and forth between them then slowly, painfully, nodded. “Why?” Finn demanded.

“He knows you,” Ren said. “That's why he followed us.”

“FN-2187,” the stormtrooper said again, carefully laying his hands flat on the ground, seeing if that was allowed then, when neither Ren nor Finn moved to stop him, pushing himself up so he could see Finn better. There was a compression bandage just barely visible around his right wrist. “It's me,” he said. “It's me. FN-2188.”

“FN-2188?!” Finn gasped, his eyes going wide, then frowning just as quickly. “You're lying.”

“I'm not!” the stormtrooper protested. “I thought you got moved out to guard supervision on one of the production planets. That's what they told us.” He scrambled to his feet as both Ren and Finn lowered their blasters, gripping his helmet and tugging it off. Underneath he revealed himself to be man Finn's age, with light-brown skin and dark blonde hair, his eyes a deep enough blue to be mistaken for brown or even black at first glance. Finn stared at him for a long and terrible moment, his emotions in the Force roiling between shock and surprise and suspicion and hope, then he lunged at FN-2188 and hugged him, harder than Ren had ever seen anyone hug another person before. FN-2188 hugged him just as tightly, and Ren realized with not a little surprise of his own that they both had tears on their faces.

“This is my brother,” Finn told Ren, not looking Ren's way, finally breaking away from FN-2188 long enough to grip him by the shoulders, then around the face, staring at him, then to hug him again. “This is my brother,” he said again, letting FN-2188 go this time, stepping away entirely, his voice tight with emotion as he picked up the blaster he'd dropped in that first lunge, holstering it. “If there is such a thing as brothers in the First Order then we were. They beat us and beat us and beat us until we stopped saying it out loud, but we were.”

“I couldn't believe you'd left without telling me,” FN-2188 said, still staring at Finn. “I asked everyone I could find if they'd heard from you and no one had. Then they told me to stop asking and I thought- I couldn't imagine why they would- but I thought, for some reason, maybe they'd--.”

“Executed me?” Finn said, managing to smile as he wiped at his face. “Nope. Not so far, anyway. They never got the chance.”

“I remember you,” Ren said, finally placing the feeling of this person in his mind, in his memories. “You were my escort.”

“One of them,” FN-2188 said, looking over at him. “Kylo Ren. You were a nightmare to work for, you know that?”

“Yeah, that's true,” Finn agreed with a broad grin.

“Always swanning around in your giant cloak, with your lightsaber, ordering us to stay behind or secure something or to keep quiet. I'll never understand why they didn't just give you droids, it would have accomplished the same thing.”

Ren could only blink at him for a moment, nonplussed. “Are you complaining that I bored you?” he asked finally.

“To tears,” FN-2188 said solemnly. “'Oh, you got assigned to Kylo Ren', they said, 'you're so lucky', they said. We would get to go on all the super special secret missions, travel the galaxy, be equipped with all the fanciest, most advanced gear the First Order had to offer-- yeah, right. Waste of everyone's time; you left us with the ship nine days out of ten. I saw the inside of a bunch of different troop convoys and that was about it.”

Finn laughed openly, then pulled FN-2188 back into a hug as Ren stared at them both. And he'd thought Finn was bothersome; FN-2188 seemed twice as bad. When they finally broke free of each other, Finn nodded Ren's direction.

“It's just a temporary thing,” he promised, as though to spare FN-2188 some great trial. “We're going to get back to the Rebels sharpish.”

“Good,” FN-2188 said.

“In the meantime I'll attempt to be suitably entertaining for you,” Ren commented, deciding they'd wasted more than enough chitchat on this and gesturing towards the haphazard plant walls that surrounded them. “It will be difficult, however, if we can't get out of this trap in time to keep the First Order from shooting us to pieces.”

“Well, you're in luck,” FN-2188 said, turning back to the opening he'd crawled out of and digging around for a moment, pulling a pack into view. “I was on the clearing teams, before I got tagged for the honor of watching Hux give some of his speeches to a captive audience, not that he ever has any other kind. Still have my plasma cutter in my bag.”

“How did you spend so long in the First Order and not get sent to reconditioning?” Ren asked, truly baffled. “If Hux ever heard you even breathe half of what you've just said to me--.”

“Oh, that's the thing about rules,” FN-2188 said, hoisting his much lighter bag onto his shoulders and bracing the plasma cutter against his hip. “The more people teach you about them, the more they teach you how to break them. The rulemongers themselves might not realize it at the time, but among the foot soldiers even someone about as bright as a Hutt figures it out eventually. Which way are we going?” he asked, turning towards the plants speculatively. “I can cut through anything, but I need a heading first.”

Finn pulled out his scanner, powering it up and glancing at Ren. “Which way to Rey?” he asked, quirking an eyebrow. Ren frowned at him, not sure he was comfortable with it being phrased exactly that way, but had already reached for the bond automatically. He'd been monitoring her since the plants had stopped falling, making sure she was alright; at the moment he could feel her sleeping thoughts, gently rising and falling as though they'd synchronized with her breathing, a comforting mental sensation that had fooled him into imagining she was right next to him more than once.

“That way,” he decided, pointing out a rough guesstimate of their direction, to the left and forward. “But they're deeper underground than they were before. We need to find a passage that goes down.”

“There's no way to know which ones are still up and kicking, but I'll do my best,” Finn said, studying his screen as FN-2188 powered up his cutter, the plasma blade unpleasantly reminding Ren of the very similar plasma blades that the Praetorians used. “There's a tunnel entrance... about thirty feet in that direction,” he said, pointing directly left. “I don't know where it goes, but it runs through some others and gets us back undercover, so it's a start.”

“Noted,” FN-2188 agreed, heading over to a plant trunk that way and setting the blade against it, where it melted through like butter, a whining humming sound coming from it as the plant smoked slightly. A moment later a tunnel had been carved out, roughly stormtrooper-sized, a tunnel FN-2188 stepped into, continuing to carve chunk after chunk out of their path until he'd cut his way into daylight once again.

“Handy,” Finn commented, stepping over the felled bits of plant that were left in his wake. Ren followed, spreading out his senses toward the First Order as the sun climbed higher into the sky. No matter what kind of disarray their line was in after the unexpected attack from the local vegetation, nothing would distract Hux for long while there was still a chance Ren was in the area. Sure enough, some semblance of a patrol was being cobbled together, more of the troop convoys FN-2188 found so uninteresting descending to the surface, reinforcements with which to start the new day.

“Keep it moving,” Ren told the others. “We'll have the First Order on our tail any minute now.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Original tumblr A/N: my first OC in the story so far, kind of! Sergeant is based off of ‘Sergeant Salt’ from the battle on Crait, and FN-2188 is somewhat canon; in Galaxy’s Edge, the new Star Wars area at Disneyworld, he escorts Kylo Ren when Kylo Ren appears in Batu. Now THAT’S too good an opportunity to pass up!
> 
> Also, Kylo to Finn in this chapter: ‘I am the Lorax, I speak for the trees’ ;)
> 
> My tumblr:
> 
> https://how-do-i-turn-this-thing-off.tumblr.com/


	22. Rey and Ren across the distance

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rey and the Rebels try to find a way out from underground, and a way to get a message to the Falcon

Despite the circumstances that had led them there the Rebels soon found out the beach wasn’t as unpleasant as it had first seemed. It was dry, at least, and the silence and darkness of the cave in general weren’t so unwelcome when what you really wanted was a good sleep. Poe let them have that, the Rebels spending several precious hours in one place, bedded down in what was probably as close to a safe haven as they were likely to get while still on this planet. Rey actually woke up naturally for the first time in she couldn’t remember how long, uncurling and propping herself up, looking around.

“What time is it?” she whispered to Rose, who was also already up, fiddling with some of the rations packs they’d taken from the First Order.

“Late morning, I think,” Rose said, glancing at a scanner sitting in the sand at her side. “Do you think we’ll be down here much longer, or heading up to the surface, or…?”

“Depends on how hard it is to find a way through.”

“I don’t like it,” Rose said, frowning at the rations pack in her hands in a very un-Rose way. “It’s just, you know, being, um, underground. For me. I know it’s not the mines, but when we spend the nights down here, and when we don’t know for sure if we’ll see the sun again or which way to go and how long it will take, it’s hard.”

Rey leaned over, taking her hand, and Rose gave her a grateful half-smile. She couldn’t imagine what Rose was going through; Rey’s slavery had been spent in a desert, a desert that was above ground where as a scavenger she’d gotten to live on her own, come and go as she pleased, have some semblance of freedom, even if it wasn’t really. Rose had never had that. Rose had had shackles and darkness for most of her life.

“I will get us out,” Rey said, pushing the Force toward her gently. “I will, Rose. I know I will. But if you want… I can try and take some of the fear, if you want.”

Rose glanced up, studying her. “Ren did that, earlier. When we were escaping from the stormtroopers, when you were behind us. I– I got stuck and I panicked, and Ren helped me through, and he kept me going so that we could get out, and if he hadn’t I don’t know what would have happened to me, or to any of us.”

“He did?” Rey asked, surprised and finding it difficult to imagine that Rose of all people would have attracted enough of Ben’s attention for him to actually use the Force within her as a soothing, calming thing. It wasn’t exactly his main skill.

“He’s not like I thought, but I don’t know what I thought, really,” Rose mumbled, gripping Rey’s hand a little harder. “But maybe he’s scarier when he’s not with us. He can probably be really scary and I hope I never have to fight him but I would, if I had to.”

Rey nodded; she could hardly have expected anything else. “Would you like me to help you?” she repeated softly. Rose nodded and Rey pushed in the Force as gently as she could, locating the swell of feeling she identified as Rose, sinking into her. What she found surprised her; Rose was maintaining her composure incredibly well considering what was actually in her head, a dark and cloying miasma of panic and memories, things she didn’t want Rey to see and didn’t want to see herself, trying to choke the hope and positivity and stamina Rose was holding onto with an iron grip. Rey closed her eyes as she focused on Rose’s pain, carefully gathering up all the good things she could think of inside herself, her own hope, her surety, her confidence that the Rebels would make it out, that Ren and Finn were alright, that the tunnels were safe, that the tunnels were empty, that no one was going to be made a slave here. Instead of attacking the dark feelings in Rose she pressed the good feelings into them, like a salve, spreading them across the darkness as if trying to erase a physical pain. It didn’t destroy the source of the pain but it calmed those feelings, soothing them, allowing the good feelings to grow and hold steady on their own again, like pulling away weeds so that the flowers could emerge.

“Thank you,” Rose murmured as Rey withdrew, still holding on to her hand. “That’s– wow. I can breathe again, you know? That’s an amazing thing you guys can do.”

Rey nodded and Rose took her hand away gently, going back to making herself a meal as Rey pondered that. A thing ‘you guys’ can do. Not just Rey, but Ben, Ben who had apparently felt sympathy for Rose strong enough to allow him to reach within her and calm her mind, while on the run, while under pressure and worrying about Rey herself. He really was a puzzle, Ben Solo.

Poe woke up not long after that, staying silent as he rolled to his side then into a sitting position, shaking sand from his hair. By then Rey and Rose had managed to cobble together a spicy drink that wasn’t actually too bad, warming it on their heater, and they gave him a cup that he accepted and meditated over as though at the moment it was the most important thing in this world. He spoke only once, to ask the time, and upon hearing it was late morning something tightened around his eyes, but he said nothing. Rey didn’t have to search his feelings to know that the long delay was partially to give Ren and Finn the best chance Poe could to catch up a little; once they were moving again, trying to get to the surface again, they wouldn’t be able too worry about the missing recon team in comparison to the main goal of getting the rest of the Rebels off this planet. There wouldn’t be too much room for error if they did end up rendezvousing with the Falcon and then squatting on the surface somewhere hoping against hope that the others would appear on the horizon before the First Order did. It wasn’t a call Poe probably wanted to make, and Rey didn’t want him to have to, either, but they’d spent as much time in one spot as they reasonably could. Nearly every Rebel was already awake of their own accord, quietly stretching out aches and pains as they stirred, passing around that miracle First Order medicine that was good for tight or tense muscles. Food and drink appeared, eaten cold or warmed by a heater, and eventually Sergeant wandered over to see what the plan was for the day.

“We have to get clear of the tunnels, now that we won’t be able to be sure of a way through,” Poe said in a slightly raspy tone, finishing his drink and clearing his throat before continuing. “It’s going to take a while to circle back around to the Falcon, especially if we want to avoid whatever Ren and Finn found. We’ll have to come at it from a completely different angle. Any word on that front?” he asked, glancing at Rey.

“They’re still doing alright,” she confirmed. “On their way back to us, I guess.”

“Well, if nothing else they might get the time they need to catch us up, if they can get through. If we can get through. But at least they’re on the surface already; after that earthquake yesterday that’s going to be a much straighter shot.”

Rey smiled and nodded, wondering if he really believed that. Even with her Force sense it was often harder to tell with Poe than with anyone else. He was so determined to stay stalwart in the face of anything that she sometimes wondered how deeply he hid his true feelings, even from himself. Still, it wasn’t the worst point to make– now that the cave-ins had rendered the tunnels that much more difficult to navigate on the surface it would be much easier to get to wherever they ended up going.

After breakfast the Rebels assembled, automatically cleaning up their makeshift campsites, refilling what they could from the lake, whose water had been cleared for consumption the night before when most of them had been too tired to do anything about it. Now everyone resupplied while they could, Poe and Sergeant already waiting next to the tunnel they were going to take out, their heads bent over several scanners at once, laid next to each other to make a larger and more comprehensive map of the area. Finally they decided on a route and the Rebels set off.

At first they did well. It wasn’t too hard to search out a way forward, surprisingly, but what they quickly learned was how hard it was to find a way up. They’d ascend a little then find a tunnel ahead had collapsed; go right or left, ascend a little farther, then find the tunnel ahead had collapsed. A few times they got lucky and came across a tunnel that was only partially blocked, clambering up and over the dirt, rocks, and roots in their way, but twice Rey had to warn them not to continue down a tunnel that otherwise seemed promising, feeling lingering unsteadiness in the Force that warned her it could still come down on their heads. It made for a difficult and frustrating journey, and after a few hours Poe called a halt.

“We’re still not close enough to the surface to contact the Falcon,” he ground out to Sergeant and Rey where they stood a little apart from the others, staring at his scanner screen with a determined frown as though he could somehow intimidate it into showing him the perfect, peerless route he was looking for. “Rey, no chance you could get Ren to contact them for us?”

“Doesn’t work like that,” she said, not unsympathetically.

“Well what does it work like?” he demanded. “Because with them there and us here we can’t do a damn thing, while they could be the difference between whether or not the Falcon gets pinned or captured.”

“I understand, Poe, but I can only send Ren feelings and I don’t even know how good I am at that,” Rey protested, trying hard to keep her own frustration out of her voice, only partially successfully. “If I could do anything more than I’m doing now–.” She stopped suddenly, arrested by a sudden and unexpected thought. Was there a way? But it was so unlikely she could use the bond like this, and the last thing she wanted to do was give the Rebels hope if none existed–.

“Girl, any option’s better than no option at all,” Sergeant said, watching her.

“There… there might be a way,” Rey admitted reluctantly. “I don’t know for sure. It’s possible, but it’s not usually something we can do on purpose.”

“Sounds a hell of a lot better than nothing,” Poe decided, perking up substantially. “What do you need? Is there anything we can do?”

“Mostly I just need privacy,” Rey said. “It won’t work if anyone’s around, even within earshot. I need to be able to focus, too. And if it does work I need to know what to tell him.”

“That’s it? Okay, that we got. Privacy, quiet, information. Those things we have by the hoverload.” Poe went back to his scanner, tapping into the larger maps section and highlighting part of it. “This is where the Falcon should be now, assuming it hasn’t had to move to avoid detection or to get away from that earthquake or whatever. Will you be able to talk to Ren more than once?”

“Better not to count on it,” Rey admitted.

“So, a message in a bottle. One way trip,” he muttered to himself, tapping the map again. “Okay, the way the tunnels are now we’ve got a better chance just trying to get back to the surface and continuing from there. We don’t really have a choice in changing our heading completely anyway; right now we’ve drooped off of First Order radar, we can be sure of that. It’ll buy us time, especially if we have a whole new trajectory to play with, so we could now rendezvous… here,” he decided, tapping another section of the map. “If you can at least get him these coordinates, and he can find a way to communicate with the Falcon and get this information through without tripping First Order surveillance, we’ll have a shot. A halfway decent shot, actually, compared to what we’ve got now.”

“Okay,” Rey said, taking the scanner from him and glancing over the screen, trying to fix the new coordinates in her mind compared to where the Rebels were at the moment.

“We’ll kip right where we are, if that’s alright for you,” Poe said, glancing over her shoulder and pointing at the tunnel they were in, tracing a finger up the route. “There’s a couple other branches for privacy. How long do you think it will take?”

“I have no idea,” Rey said, hesitating. “Poe…”

“Let’s just give it an estimate, okay?” he said firmly. “Just a time period for you to try and see. One hour? Two?”

“I’m not sure.”

“Well, start with one then come back and check in. If you need more time we’ll go from there.”

“Poe–.”

“Just try,” Sergeant recommended, his tone unusually patient. “No one will think less of you if you can’t.”

Rey nodded, turning away before she could say anything else, certain that they didn’t know just how long a long shot this was but also somewhat relieved they weren’t just assuming it would happen on command. What if she couldn’t get Ben’s attention? What if he wasn’t able to be alone? What if he felt tense or harried, and she couldn’t risk distracting him? She worried through the problem from one end then the other, like a dog with a bone, ducking into a side tunnel a little farther up, a much narrower passage that branched off into the unknown. In lieu of a light she called Ben’s lightsaber to her hand, firing the blade, the red plasma chasing away the dark and sending leaping, dodging shadows all around her. A few twists of the tunnel later she chose a portion of the stone floor that was relatively flat and decided to sit there, turning the lightsaber off but keeping it in her hand as she set a light on the floor in front of her, sitting in her meditative pose and holding the saber in both hands in her lap. She was tense, that was the problem. Tense and nervous. She wasn’t that good at meditation to start with, and her back was sore, and the stone floor was hard, and the back of her neck itched, probably from dried sweat even though she’d rinsed it with lake water twice. The distractions came and went and she tried not to let them influence her, focusing on her center before remembering it was still shaken and focusing on the solid presence of the bond instead. The bond, which never wavered, never fluctuated. How scared Ben must have been when it disappeared; she still hadn’t managed to ask him about that. She should, when they got a moment. If they ever got a moment.

Ben. In the bond she pushed her need toward him, tentatively reaching out, trying to see what he was feeling right now, if it was even a good time for this, if he was okay, if he was also seeking her. He seemed a little distracted, but not as though he was hurt or in danger, more just a reflection of strain and fatigue. She wondered how much sleep he had gotten since leaving her. It didn’t seem like much, if any at all.

Ben. She focused, breathing, the bond as her center. She pushed expectancy, concentration, hope, trying to get across that she was meditating, that she was waiting for him. If he could find a way to stop for a moment, if he could be alone, if he could reach back for her–.

Something about him in the bond shifted, flexing, his consciousness aware of her but not trying to reach back quite yet. Could he not tell what she wanted? How did she communicate that she needed him to connect when they’d never done this before? How could she explain, with feelings alone, something this complex, this new and unfamiliar?

His consciousness shifted away from her again, satisfied that whatever she was doing she wasn’t hurt or in any danger, and Rey gritted her teeth at the sense that he had decided to ignore her. She pushed as insistently as she could, the need, the expectancy, the hope, but he’d gone back to focusing on other things now and she got the sense that her feeling in the bond no longer made too much effect on his conscious mind.

Rey sighed, hard, relaxing out of her meditation pose and leaning back against the wall behind her. She never should have suggested to Poe that she could do this. No, more than that, she never should have let him know it was even an option. How could she get Ben’s attention without being hurt, or scared, or in pain? There was very little in this tunnel that she could convince herself to find particularly threatening or dangerous. She growled in frustration, leaning forward again and grinding the heels of her hands against her eyes. Maybe what she should really be afraid of was losing her mind, because it certainly felt like that might be an option at this point. Some loose dirt that had gotten caught in her hair when she leaned back fell free, rolling off her shoulder and into the dark, and she glanced at it for a moment then around at the wall, suddenly struck by a thought. Loam. A soft loam wall.

Rey hastily rearranged herself back into a meditative pose, grinning widely, knowing exactly what to try next. After all, what was the one thing Ben had already specifically told her was hard for him to ignore when she was thinking about it?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another chapter of Tag Galaxy should be up as well by the time you read this, so if you go in for both series hope you like that one!
> 
> My tumblr:
> 
> https://how-do-i-turn-this-thing-off.tumblr.com/


	23. Ren notices

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ren's journey with the two deserters continues
> 
> Tumblr:
> 
> https://how-do-i-turn-this-thing-off.tumblr.com/

The tunnels had become such a maze, between the cave-in's and the partially blocked or restricted passageways, that even with the First Order presence trying to navigate below ground was now only barely less difficult than trying to navigate above ground. Even with the help of the Force and in ideal circumstances Ren would have struggled to find a way through, but now he had to deal with his own growing fatigue as well as Finn and FN-2188 babbling to each other the whole damn time, a punishment Ren was sure he'd done nothing to deserve. At the moment they'd realized that FN-2188 needed a so-called 'real name' and were trying to make something clever out of his First Order designation, with extremely limited success.

“The problem,” FN-2188 declared as they both followed along behind Ren, “is that you already took Finn. Selfish bastard, as always.”

“First come, first served,” Finn said smugly. “What about doing, like, something from 'one more'?”

“Because it's one more than yours?” FN-2188 asked, sounding doubtful, a rare moment thus far in which he and Ren actually agreed.

“I mean, 2187, 2188, makes sense right? It could be like... Unmor. Wunmer? N'moor.” Ren shook his head in despair, both at the suggestions and the inanity of the conversation itself, but Finn was hardly done. “Or 'one plus'!” he exclaimed in a tone that suggested he'd stumbled on something of note when he definitely had not. “Woonpluz. Unplutz. Wenplis?”

“I refuse to use any of those words, in any circumstance,” Ren said over his shoulder as they approached a crossroads between their path and the next. He led them down the left branch, finding that one felt a little more friendly than the other.

“Yeah, well you're still getting used to 'Finn' so that's no surprise,” Finn reminded him, doing absolutely nothing to help. Not that scanners were all that much use at this point, but it'd be a gesture at least. “Something requiring a little more technical genius, you know, a little linguistic sophistication--.”

“Is that what you call it?” FN-2188 asked. “I thought you were sneezing.” There followed a brief scuffle as they both tried to punch each other, then tried to wrestle, standing up, while going down a tunnel. Ren clenched his jaw and kept moving, wondering just how long he'd have to meditate later to recover the patience he was expending on this moment.

Rey. She was in his head, in the bond, and Ren stumbled a half step as he reached for her, seeking out the feeling of her. There was nothing to be alarmed about, just a nebulous sensation of need, and of wanting him with her. She missed him. An unexpected and entirely reciprocated sentiment, but while it made him smile for a moment it wasn't really the most important thing right now. Ren gently pushed the bond away, trying to focus on his Force sense as they approached another intersection. He chose the left-hand tunnel then stretched his senses farther as they continued on, trying to anticipate what was coming next. This was the clearest path toward the vague direction in which they wanted to go, but it didn't lead downwards. Should they try to descend first and then move forward, or take the whatever was open while they still could?

Loam, the smell of loam in his nostrils, as clear and as real as if he'd suddenly walked into a garden being overturned. He stumbled again in his surprise, this time badly enough that Finn and FN-2188 noticed, sadly interrupting Finn's fresh ruminations on whether they should just flip Finn and call FN-2188 'Niff'.

“Something up ahead?” Finn asked, suddenly all business as he grabbed his blaster into his hands, FN-2188 hardly a beat behind him.

“No,” Ren said briefly, glancing at the walls then up and down the tunnel. Smooth stone in both directions, as though this portion of the planet's semi-hollowed center had been worn out by an underground water system, now long gone. But the smell of loam persisted nonetheless.

Heat. Not heat like warmth, heat in his mind, in his body, in his lips. Finally Ren realized, turning back to the bond as she pushed the sensations at him, the memories, the way they'd moved together--.

“Are you lost?” Finn asked, lowering his blaster slightly, and Ren could feel the Rebel staring at him as he stood stock still, totally unprepared to handle an onslaught of this kind, especially in present company. Or in any company, of any kind at all.

“It's Rey,” he managed to reply. “I think... she's trying to get my attention.” And she'd been more than successful in doing that, so successful that he now had to sharply curtail his own memories in response and instead make himself take a couple of deep breaths to regain some semblance of focus. In the bond he could feel her noticing that her... unorthodox approach had worked, and the resulting self-satisfaction as she pressed a memory of a kiss across his lips until he felt he could taste it. He wasn't helping the situation much, instinctively reaching for the feeling she wanted him to feel, wishing it was here and now as much as he was sure she did.

“I'm going on ahead,” he told Finn and FN-2188, glancing at them over his shoulder. Finn had already holstered his blaster, a resigned expression on his face, while FN-2188 had lowered his and looked bemused, if not a little uneasy. “If I can meditate for a second I might be able to figure out what she wants,” he continued. Besides the obvious. “It won't work if I'm not alone so don't come up the tunnel until I come back for you, you might disrupt it.”

He felt them still staring at him as he continued on up the tunnel without them, his light trained on the floor. “What the hell was that?” FN-2188 demanded only a moment later, his voice carrying, though Ren doubted whether he cared if Ren overheard him.

“Rey and Ben,” Finn replied, as though that was an explanation. “They've got a thing, it's incredibly weird. That's not even that bad.” He launched into what Ren was sure would be a scintillating tale about the abnormalities Finn himself had either personally been a witness to or had heard about but by then Ren was fortunately already too far away to be bothered by it. The tunnel turned and with it came silence, finally, and one twist later and there she was, Rey, sitting on the floor in a meditative pose with the hilt of his lightsaber in her hands, looking up at him.

“Finally,” she said as he stumbled for a third time, surprised the bond had activated so quickly. Rey was already getting to her feet, grinning at Ren as he gave her his most disapproving expression. “I thought you'd notice that one.”

“Was that necessary?” he asked, not sure if it was something to complain about or not.

“You were ignoring me.”

“I was busy.”

“You weren't that busy,” she said, clipping his saber onto her belt and pulling out a scanner. “I have a message from Poe. We're too far below the surface and we're not going to be able to make it up top at least before the end of the day, maybe longer. The Falcon is here right now,” she said, tilting her scanner screen towards him, and he glanced down at the coordinates that had been highlighted as he automatically reached for his own scanner, matching it up to what she was showing him. Once he'd entered the information into his own device she pulled up another map of a completely different part of the planet. “Poe says it needs to go here.”

“That's where you're headed?” Ren asked, unable to keep a note of surprise and concern out of his voice. It seemed a long ways away from the original objective.

“Yes. How far away are you?”

“We're about here,” Ren said, fiddling with his scanner until it reverted to its original map, showing his current position. “We're not making much progress this way but we can probably get to the Falcon if we swing around. And if we can get under the First Order line.” He looked up but Rey was gone, the tunnel empty, as if there had never been anyone here but him.

He stayed still for a moment, taking in how suddenly she'd disappeared, wondering if that was somehow the way she'd planned it. No, he didn't think so; Rey was many things but rarely clinical in her use of her abilities, and especially not often bound to cold efficiency when she spoke to Ren. More than likely it was his own weariness now taking its toll on both of them; he hadn't slept or even taken much of a break in what was quickly becoming too long and it was getting more and more taxing to have to hold a clear thought in his head for more than a few moments. But overall he was still quite lucky in that regard, he reminded himself as he turned to go back to his companions: at least he was capable of a clear thought or two to begin with.

“Oh good, that didn't take long at all,” Finn said, getting to his feet when he saw Ren coming up the tunnel. “Did you manage to get through to Rey?”

“Yes,” Ren said, holding up his scanner to illustrate. “We've been given a message for the Falcon. New coordinates for pickup, since the Rebel's aren't going to be able to get to the original meeting place. Poe's got them going a completely different direction now.”

“Did you tell them about me?” FN-2188 asked, his feeling in the Force flushing with nerves and almost a shy uncertainty.

“It wasn't exactly a long conversation,” Ren pointed out. “I wouldn't be too concerned about it if I were you, the Rebellion has a galaxy-wide reputation for taking on any stray that wanders in.”

“Careful, Solo, you're one of those strays at the moment,” Finn replied, hoisting his pack. “What's our new heading?”

They took a moment to check Ren's scanner, lining up the coordinates on each of their individual screens so that they all had a copy of the information Rey had given Ren. No one said it out loud, but there was an implicit understanding that each of them separately needed to have the information in case all three of them didn't make it to the Falcon to pass it on. Ren kept an extremely careful watch on how FN-2188 felt in the Force throughout the process, examining him for even the briefest flush of dishonest or traitorous intent, but found nothing to suggest he was anything more or less than another First Order deserter eager to do his part for the Rebel cause. How would Hux explain this one, Ren wondered? FN-2187 must be a wrinkle already, since Finn had openly identified himself in front of a crowd of stormtroopers, presumably all with working ears. When FN-2188 showed up on the First Order's radar again, as he inevitably would, and they realized he hadn't died in the attack of the forest, well, what was it Hux was always harping on about? One data point was an anomaly, two data points were a pattern?

That done they adjusted their path forward to lead roughly towards the Falcon's current position and directly under what this morning had been the First Order's line, though that was no longer certain. Ren led them on, trying to guess what Hux would do now that the forest floor around him had been made all but impassable for low hovercraft in every direction. With no Force sensitivity to help him find a clear path and no clue either as to where Ren and Finn or the other Rebels had gone?

“FN-2188,” Ren said over his shoulder to the deserters, who had finally gone quiet for the last few minutes. “How thorough was your briefing on Hux's assault of this planet?”

“I don't know much more than you know,” FN-2188 admitted. “The plan was supposed to be to clear-cut all along your projected route and fill the tunnels with patrols.”

“The patrols at least are a no-go,” Finn contributed. “With this many tunnels collapsed they have a better chance of just getting lost and cut off from the First Order lines than they do actually finding anyone who might still be in the area.”

Ren pondered that, wondering what the likelihood was that Hux would just send the patrols outside of the clear-cut area in all directions to try and get a lead on at least where the Rebels were headed now. Unlikely, he decided. They hadn't gotten below ground until well in the morning and the First Order had still seem fairly occupied with the disaster that was the remains of their front line.

“What's Hux doing with the fleet?” he asked over his shoulder after a while.

“Nothing,” FN-2188 replied. “Air support isn't working at all on the other side of the canopy so the only way to scan the ground is with ground craft, and even they can't get a very wide range. He's not even bothering to commit ranking officers to the surface, they've already been sent to other bases to rally the rest of the fleet.”

“Sent them to where, exactly?” Ren asked, processing this information.

“Wherever the fleet is now?” FN-2188 suggested rather uselessly. “They didn't tell me, it wasn't part of the briefing for surface troops.”

Where had the fleet been the last time Ren had had to pay attention to it? Ren considered, trying to remember and coming up with a handful of star systems but still unable to think of one that seemed in any way unusually significant. And what was the purpose of rallying them now, especially to this planet of all places? Having a hundred more ships in orbit wouldn't be too much use unless he'd been serious about bombing the planet to dust in lieu of capturing Ren and the Rebels directly.

“He wants to make a spectacle of it,” Finn decided after a long moment, his tone gone deadly serious again. “Make sure the rest of the fleet sees so that they won't question him after. As long as anyone thinks there's even a chance you're still alive, there's a problem.”

“That gives us several days still, if it's true,” Ren replied, considering the possibility nonetheless. “It would take easily that long for Hux to assemble the main fleet and get the other officers to go along with what he's done. And it's hard to believe he'd pass up the opportunity to defeat me face to face.”

“He'd pass it up if it meant blowing you and all of us to atoms,” Finn said, sounding very, very certain for a former footsoldier who had barely ever interacted with Hux personally before yesterday. “But we'll be long gone by then.”

“If the Falcon can get through their line.”

“The Falcon's not the only ship we've got, Solo,” Finn pointed out. He really was throwing that name around with gay abandon today. “That's just the getaway ship. But if Hux is going to try to destroy this planet--.”

“However many tired old half-rigged smuggling cruisers you've got, if Hux has the whole fleet with him you won't be able to do a thing to stop him.”

“I wasn't talking about me,” Finn said, his words weighted with heavy implication. FN-2188 drew in a quick breath of surprise but said nothing; Ren frowned and kept moving without looking back, stretching his senses, trying to focus on the way forward even though he could feel in the Force that Finn wasn't about to let him off the hook. “Yeah, not comfortable is it?” Finn continued. “One foot in, one foot out. Use us today, shoot us up tomorrow. Rose piecing your shirt back together, Rose in front of a firing squad. But you don't care about that. It's still just you wanting something for you. If Rey agreed to desert the Rebellion and you both stole the Falcon and left tonight, I'd bet everything I've got that once the fleet gets here you'd give the order yourself.”

No. He wouldn't. Ren kept going, concentrating, just barely keeping his frustration under control in the heavy, tense silence that followed. He knew that Finn was just as short on sleep as he was, had endured just as much stress and tension as he had, but it made it no easier to keep from snapping at him that he was no more likely to destroy an entire goddamned planet today than he was yesterday, and maybe this one even less than many others. Finn hadn't felt those plants being levelled, and mourning each other, and demanding of Ren why someone, anyone, intended to slaughter them so senselessly, so indiscriminately. Finn hadn't felt their despair as they'd died, their sacrifice; he hadn't even know they were capable of those things until Ren had told him. He wouldn't destroy this planet if every Rebel in the galaxy congregated here. And he wanted to say it out loud but something held him back, the certainty that even if he did, and even if he meant it, Finn would reject it somehow and that really would be the thing that might shatter Ren's increasingly fragile self-restraint. It didn't make it less true but it made it impossible to have this argument here, now, while they were both straining against their own roiling emotions.

“Who's Rose?” FN-2188 asked at long last, in a very quiet voice.

“Does it matter?” Finn replied bitterly, in a loud voice meant to make sure Ren heard. “Just another Rebel dog this one's going to put down as soon as he has the chance.” FN-2188 hesitated and Ren could sense him tugging Finn slightly farther back, a couple more steps of distance between him and them as Finn kept muttering to his friends things that seemed unlikely to be complimentary. After a while the two deserters finally fell silent, probably giving in to their weariness over their need to say nasty things about Ren behind his back as they traversed the few tunnels still left standing on their way across this morning's First Order line.


	24. Rey and the Rebels get topside

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rey continues her journey

“The First Order has every imaginable resource the galaxy has to offer,” Sergeant growled, “and still this is all they can cook up in their labs for their bucketheads to eat.” He held up a circle of what looked like some sort of hard, evaporated milk, studded with round pink protuberances. It wasn't something Rey had tried yet but she had to admit, it didn't look appetizing.

“If you don't want it, give it to me!” Rose offered with cheery bravado. “I love those.” Sergeant looked at her like he didn't believe this could possibly be true but passed it over as they walked. Rose took a bite and smiled widely at him for a moment then coughed, her face screwing up in comical disgust. “Okay, no, I lied, they're terrible.”

Rey laughed, glancing down the line of Rebels snaking along behind them. They'd been finding progressively clearer and more easily traversed tunnels as they went on and had made significant progress upward, enough that they'd all agreed to snack on the move instead of taking a break in their eagerness to be on the surface again. First Order food had been passing hands for a few minutes as a natural barter system sprung up, Rebels quickly identifying their preferred meals and trading back and forth to get things they wanted and rid themselves of things they didn't.

“The gray pod's good,” Poe told Rey as she faced forward again, his mouth partially full as he chewed on a gray substance that looked like some sort of grain soaked in a plant sauce. “The purple and brown one, not so much.”

“How much farther to the surface?” Sergeant asked with a gusty sigh. “Maybe there's something edible up above-- and fresh.”

“Can't be much farther,” Poe commented, wiping his fingers on his shirt before consulting his scanner. “The tunnels have been almost completely clear for the last klik at least. Maybe the earthquake didn't reach out this far.”

“'Earthquake',” Sergeant snorted. “I've been in eleven earthquakes so far and that didn't feel like any of them.” Poe glanced sideways at Rey but she shrugged, having no more answers for him now than she did before about what she'd felt when the cave-in's had started. “I think it was bombing,” Sergeant decided, undeterred by their silence. “That or that Kylo Ren.”

“We'll ask him when we see him next,” Poe said firmly, eyes on his scanner.

“It wasn't First Order,” Rey contributed. “Whatever happened I don't they'd like for it to happen again either. It must have hit them harder than it hit us.”

“How hard?” Sergeant asked hopefully.

“Not hard enough.”

Their tunnel ascended slowly but steadily, switching back and forth on itself every now and again as though it couldn't decide exactly which way it wanted to go. Nevertheless the air began to feel less stale, and Poe and Sergeant had just put their heads over a scanner, trying to decide how much farther there was to go, when they came around a corner into a section of tunnel that had collapsed. This time, however, the pile of rubble was much older than the day-old cave-in's they'd been seeing before, partially covered in green undergrowth, and led up to a hole through with the could see the underside of the canopy far overhead, glowing green in the midday light. Anyone else would have wanted to cheer when stumbling into this small miracle, but the Rebels knew far better than that. Instead gasps and then a heartfelt sigh rippled through their ranks, a sound both of relief and eagerness as they ranged around the base of the rocky slope, gazing upwards and taking deep breaths of fresh air.

“Rose, go through everyone's packs and make sure the plating is still up and running,” Poe ordered in an undertone, turning towards them. “I don't want any nasty surprises once we get up there. Sergeant, weapons check. It's not likely they'll have searches ranging this far out from where we were, but if they do I want them to be the ones outgunned. Rey, recon. Check to see if it's safe, then get up there and see if you can sense anything we should be aware of.” Everyone nodded, going about their tasks, Rey approaching the bottom of the slope, sending her awareness upwards. There were no First Order troops or machines of any kind within her range, but there was a strange and somewhat threatening sense of agitation she couldn't quite place, sweeping through the area like a breeze, a source-less feeling that made her feel slightly uncomfortable herself, as though it was bleeding into her.

“Anything?” Poe asked, finished doing a round of the Rebels and coming up behind her.

“Maybe. It feels different up there than it did before. Less...” she searched for an appropriate word in her mind, not even sure if she knew a word that could describe this. “Less settled. There's tension above us, but I don't know where it's coming from.”

“Is it going to be a problem?”

“I don't know.”

Poe nodded, considering that as he looked around at everyone getting geared up and ready to go. “Think you can check it out?” Rey nodded, her hand dropping to the lightsaber at her side, an unconscious comforting gesture to remind herself it was there. Poe followed the movement and frowned. “By the way, how good are you with that thing?”

“With a lightsaber?” Rey asked. “I don't know. I've done pretty well so far.”

“But with Ren's lightsaber? It's not different or unfamiliar? You haven't tried using it or anything?”

“No, not yet,” Rey admitted. Truth be told she'd only used it for light so far, which probably hadn't been Ben's intention when he'd loaned it to her but was all she'd needed.

“The thing is, if it does turn out there are patrols in this area I'd like to take them on the same way we were doing with Ren before,” Poe explained, “but are you as good with that thing as he is?” She hesitated, unsure how to answer that, and Poe frowned in concern. “Look, if you don't think it'll work as well we'll just go the old camouflage route, but maybe give it a whirl up top just to see. If it's a no-go at least we'll know. We've got a minute anyway, Rose wants to change out some of the plating's power cells before we go up.”

“Okay,” Rey agreed. At least if she did it up there the Rebels wouldn't be around to see it if she dropped the saber or burned herself or something. She turned towards the grassy slope, starting to climb to the surface, keeping her senses spread wide and still encountering nothing of concern besides the vague uneasiness. When she reached the opening she hesitated again, reaching and reaching, but it seemed safe enough and she climbed out, back up into the fresh air and daylight, surveying the area around her. The brush was high and thick on this part of the forest floor, shielding her exit from view, but it didn't seem as though that would be needed; she could hear only some small animal sounds and the breeze, peaceful and serene as it meandered through the greenery, rustling leaves here and there.

Satisfied that she was alone and unthreatened Rey shed her pack, stretching and pacing her way across to what looked like a relatively clear and even patch of ground, not sure exactly how to start. The lightsaber felt heavy in her hand as she unclipped it from her belt but solid and sure. The last time she'd swung a saber around just for practice she had been on Ahch-To and the saber in question had been hers, and she'd still sent a large chunk of rock sailing over the edge of a cliff and nearly killed two Lanai Caretakers. Remembering that she went just a little farther from the tunnel where the Rebels were still hidden and double checked that the spot she'd chosen was well clear of any obstructions.

Rey took a deep breath, held the saber out, and fired the blade. She'd forgotten about the lateral vents somehow, twin jets of superheated red plasma, the air around them shimmering gently as the blade crackled. It was as unlike her lightsaber as it was possible to be, the blade longer, the hilt heavier, the red color unsettling her. This blade had been used to kill people-- but not always for the wrong reasons, she reminded herself. This blade had also been used to defend her against Snoke's guards on the Supremacy. This blade had been used to protect her friends while she slept.

Ben. She swung it up in front of her, stacking her hands one on top of the other on the hilt, closing her eyes. The bond as her center, solid, sure. Ben. His confidence, his will, his strength. The feeling of him seemed to go almost a little wary of her as he felt her using the bond consciously, as if she might be about to try and 'get his attention' again, and that made Rey smile for a moment before she gently pushed it away, focusing on here and now.

She decided to start with long, simple sweeps that would serve as stretches as much as anything else, working out her muscles and getting her used to the new weight and length. The blade whirred through the air as she went, a very different sound up close than the blade she'd used to use, the cracked Kyber crystal at its core sending unsteady designs flickering up and down its length like miniature lightning, lightning that snapped and popped as it swung through the air. Rey ignored the differences and focused on the feeling, the movement, letting it flow through her instead of trying to direct it. The Force was in her, the Force was in Ben, the Force was between them, and the Force was in this lightsaber and this moment. The red blade rose and fell around her, and in her Force sense it seemed to shimmer, illuminating the world with each pass, lighting up the brush on the ground, the air she breathed, her hands and feet, arms and legs, bracing and pulling, turning and pushing, the sword moving a little faster in her wake, the lightning along the blade buzzing through the air until it seemed to sing.

She could feel them. Rey pressed her eyes closed harder, listening, reaching out as she continued to move, drawing the Force with her, heightening and expanded her senses as her focus grew. The restlessness she'd sensed before had sensed her too and now it sought her as the flow of the Force lit her up until she burned as much as the blade did; the great canopy was alive, its trunks, its leaves, the electrical current that knit its many parts together, had thoughts and feelings, and now those feelings turned towards her. They didn't recognize her.

_I'm Rey_, she told them, opening herself to the great beings that surrounded her. _We are here_. She quickly realized that words weren't getting through but only emotions, impressions, much like using the bond when Ben was too far away for anything more complex. In response to her presence a small tide of agitation quickly grew, the plants communicating to each other faster than she could follow, so that even though she was just connecting to those nearest her it seemed she may as well be communicating with them all.

They wanted to know if she was one of the beings they'd met before. She didn't understand and frowned harder in concentration, pushing her senses in the Force, faster and faster, drawing not on her own innate power but on the living Force around her that she was beginning to feel now and use to expand herself beyond what she was capable of without this focus. Distantly she felt sweat on her skin and gripped the lightsaber hilt harder so that it wouldn't slip. _I'm Rey_, again, more insistently, but that meant nothing to them. Was she hurting them? Was she here to hurt them? They didn't seem to fear her but instead their emotions rose up defensively, almost eager to identify a culprit, a source that they could destroy.

_Friends_. She pushed the idea back at them, standing her ground and showing the plants that she and the beings with her were friends, that they had never hurt anything on this planet. True memories, memories she had herself and the shadows of the emotions she could remember feeling in Ben and all the others, that they meant no harm. The plants focused on her with such intensity it almost seemed to sting, lightly, like something abrasive against her skin. They had limited intelligence but they had sensed through her the basic mechanics of what she was doing in the Force, and while they weren't themselves Force beings the other energy already inside them, the naturally occurring electrical current that flowed through their network of root and leaf and stem, was roughly similar from what they could tell and could be drawn up in a similar way. They focused it on her and as it rose it was caught up in the current Rey herself was creating, and she realized with an abrupt gasp that almost dangerously upset her focus that the stinging she was feeling was the plant's electricity, making contact with her, jumping across her skin. They could kill her now, she realized suddenly. Whether accidentally or intentionally, the electricity they were still pushing at her insistently was one hundred times, one thousand times, her own power in the Force, the power of countless life forms brought to bear. She couldn't take it, couldn't handle it, had no idea what to do with it as it reached for her.

But the lightsaber could. By now she was swinging the blade at such high speed that even with her eyes closed in her Force sense she could see the net of red light it wove around her, its singing lightning leaping and sparking more than ever, increasing in strength in response to her power and her need, the miniature bolts streaking behind the blade as it moved, almost coming apart from it as it connected with the energy of the plants. The saber drew it up and out, away from her skin, joining with the main current. The two became one in that instant, just as Rey and the saber had become one.

She had no warning, no way to prepare or anticipate: the moment all three elements connected, herself, the saber, and the plant's electrical current, her Force sight snapped outwards into the plant's joined consciousness, almost overwhelming Rey as she barely managed to hold on to her physical awareness and keep going, her movements mechanical, her arms lead, her head spinning as she melded her awareness with that of this planet's great beings. Within them her sight raced outwards at an unbelievable speed as it traveled the canopy in every direction, miles passing in a breath, diving down through the trunks and under the soil, reaching up into the sky as for a brief, incalculably profound moment, her own mind and self and life force became part of theirs.

It was too much, far, far too much. Rey's mind was only human; even with the aid of the Force it wasn't structured to link into a network like this, to handle and sort so much information all at once. She withdrew, fracturing away from the others with a report like a mental blaster shot, yanking the lightsaber back into starting position in front of her as she stood still, every muscle trembling with adrenaline and strain while the electrical field sank away and the saber's own electrical current wrapped around it once again, returning to the blade. Now only Rey's connection to the Force remained, and within that safer medium she could still feel the plants in her comparatively limited way, the forest going still as their attention ebbed and flowed around her, full of wondering and a slight, almost embarrassed tinge of apology. They had not known it could hurt her. They had never had such a communion with a foreign being before. One-of-us, they seemed to sigh as she finally lowered the blade, pressing the button and making the burning red plasma withdraw, opening her eyes, which even in the soft green canopy light stung and smarted. The plants repeated their thoughts, almost like a name in the way they phrased it, a title, a benediction. One-of-us, they called her as she walked among them, returning to the tunnel, passing through their midst, now no longer restless and uneasy but gentle, curious, relieved. A friend.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Y'all know I had to do it :) Oh, and I'm going to build on it for sure. Give me a few chapters-- and wait until Ren sees! It's going to be a THING
> 
> https://how-do-i-turn-this-thing-off.tumblr.com/


	25. Ren and the deserters reach the surface

Ren and the two deserters had made it back to the surface somehow, emerging on the other side of where the First Order line had been, just at the edge of the clear-cutting. FN-2188 made them a way forward through the few downed trunks that still stood between them and the canopy, Ren and Finn sweating in the open, bright sunlight, both of them with their hands on their weapons, just waiting for stormtroopers or worse to appear at any time. Luck was with them, or at the very least Rose's magnet-plating; either way they made it under the canopy without being spotted, and continued on to where the Falcon was supposed to be waiting for them.

The forest felt different now. Ren was more aware of the plants than he had been, but even so he would have been able to feel the general sense of uneasiness that remained, the latent anger, exuded by the plants in every direction. A great and terrible thing had happened to them, and he wondered if they could somehow tell that they hadn't destroyed Hux as they'd meant to. Many of his machines, yes, and countless of his minions, but the main source of the threat as Ren had told it to them survived and persisted. It was another thing to sift through, another layer of sensation in his senses that he needed to ignore or at least reach past as they trudged through the undergrowth. Physically the forest seemed peaceful again, and their journey was accompanied by the sounds of small creatures they couldn't see in the undergrowth and breezes that disturbed only the lightest dead leaves and bits of green refuse. No matter how insistently Ren pushed his senses, it seemed that for now they were the only humanoids here.

Rey's consciousness lit up in the bond for the second time today and Ren gave it a distracted sweep, feeling only nerves and determination but nothing to give him any real concern. He hoped she was doing her Force exercises and trying to address the unsteadiness he still felt within her; sure enough, her feeling in the bond began to wax stronger with the slow, purposeful beginnings of focus on the connection. The living Force was so strong within her that it amazed him sometimes. For now he gave it only passing attention as they continued on, impatient to reach the Falcon at last, but moments later something pulled him back. She was continuing to wax stronger, some sort of motion and power in her that he hadn't noticed before, lighting her up.

He slowed and stopped, looking upward. A feeling was sweeping through the plants around him, a focus on a distant point, and he knew instinctively that it was her. Whatever she was doing, the living network of beings that comprised the inhabitants of this planet was noticing it.

“Rey,” he said as the deserters stopped behind him. “She's communicating with the plants, I think.”

“These plants?” FN-2188 asked, also looking up.

“They're connected.”

“The Rebels?” Finn asked in a clipped, unfriendly tone.

“I don't know. She's in no danger, so they're probably fine.”

“Encouraging,” Finn muttered, passing him. “Let's go.” FN-2188 followed without a glance back at Ren and Ren shook his head at them but started walking again, splitting his focus between the movement and the bond. As irritating as Finn's attitude was becoming the Falcon was near enough that soon Ren should be able to sense it, a moment he did not anticipate with any great pleasure. He hadn't stepped onto that ship since he was a child, hadn't even seen it since the bond had connected him to Rey on Crait just in time to watch the Falcon take her from him. As much as he wanted to reach the ship, get to the Rebels, and finally get free of this place, he also hoped that what Finn had said was true and that the Rebels had other ships at their disposal for when Poe made good on his promise to give Ren passage elsewhere.

His sense of Rey in the Force was continuing to build, and he realized it was beginning to be colored by a shadow of pain, an undercurrent of more trepidation than fear. Whether that was because she was too involved in whatever she was doing or because she was deliberately trying to keep it from him-- but no, he realized, her focus was so far away now that he doubted she had much conscious sense of him at all. He wished he could see her and try to make sense of this; he had such strange impressions of light, of sensation, of feelings that were both hers and not hers, completely unfiltered and sent straight into his mind with no context, no real substance he could grab onto. The pain, at least, was gone. Ren tried to reach for her, stopping again, all his focus needed for the task, but again it seemed she was so far beyond him that he made no impression in her mind for once.

She blew past him. One minute she was in the bond and another she was here, then not here, as if she'd passed him on a speeder going fast as light, her real presence in the Force overloading his mind as it flooded with more thought and feeling than he could contain, than he could understand. His vision went white, then black, and when he opened his eyes again he was flat on his back, staring upwards, the glowing green underside of the canopy marred by the two deserters kneeling over him. He didn't even have time to blink in confusion before a canteen came into sight, and instinctively squeezed his eyes shut again just as he was doused with lukewarm water.

“Stop it!” he sputtered, sitting up too late to keep some of the water from going up his nose, coughing as he tried to clear it, wiping water off his face and shaking it out of his hair.

“The Rebels,” Finn demanded, grabbing him by the shoulders and physically turning Ren towards him, his face drawn, his eyes alight with aggressive, desperate fear.

“I don't know!” Ren snapped, shoving him off. “I don't know what happened. Let me-- let me think.” He closed his eyes again, reaching for Rey in the bond, but she felt steady, relieved, happy even. “They're fine,” he grated out, opening his eyes again and feeling no small relief of his own. Whatever she had done to completely overwhelm him, or whatever she had caused, Rey herself, at least, seemed to have suffered no ill effects from it.

“You going to pass out again?” Finn asked, his tone so deliberately unfriendly that even FN-2188 looked at him askance. It tipped something over in Ren- the sudden attack on his consciousness, the fear for Rey immediately following when he woke up, the relief after that- his emotions were a roil already, and he was tired, and his temper got the better of him almost before he knew it. He snapped out a hand in a Force push Hux would have recognized very well, throwing Finn away from him and into the brush. FN-2188 gasped then grabbed for his blaster, intending to train it on Ren, and Ren threw him too, harder, farther away. He wasn't going to deal with this. He had more than enough on his mind without trailing these two around, fraying the edges of his already badly taxed stamina as he tried to do so much, pay attention to so much, the plants and Rey, the First Order and the Rebels, this planet and Hux. 

Ren got up and started off without looking back, knowing he hadn't thrown the deserters far enough or hard enough to expect too much time alone. The feeling around him had changed again, he realized as he spread his Force sense around him once more. That uneasiness and restlessness he'd noticed when they'd reached the surface had been greatly diminished, replaced by the same feelings that he could feel in Rey; somehow it was her communication with the plants that had been the catalyst for whatever had happened, and that had brought to pass the renewed peace around him now.

The deserters were on his tail, and he realized what they were doing just in time to stop and throw out a hand, diverting their blaster bolts into the ground at his feet, where they left twin furrows in the soft dirt. Finn and FN-2188 stood shoulder to shoulder in perfect First Order formation, blasters raised, sighting down their barrels at Ren.

“Stand down!” he snapped, throwing his hand out again and forcing the barrels upwards. Their shots went wide; with his other hand he caught them, preventing them from tearing through the canopy, then turned them downwards back into the dirt. Finn grabbed for a second, smaller blaster strapped to his thigh but Ren called both his blasters to his hands, sighting them at the Rebels, and fired. They had just enough time to split apart, dodging out of the way, and the bolts missed them.

“That's enough,” he repeated, holstering his blasters and turning away. Another bolt came for him and he whirled, catching it, but was surprised by Finn charging in right behind, tackling him around the middle and sending him to the ground, hard. Finn wasted no time following up his advantage, aiming a quick punch at Ren's ribs, then another as Ren rolled over, slamming his forearm against Finn's ear, knocking him just far enough to the side to get out from under him. The Force pounded through him, the instinct to use it, bend it, wield it, but when Finn came at him with a overhand swing Ren only ducked, getting to his feet and throwing a shoulder into Finn's chest as Finn moved to follow, sending him back to the ground.

“Stand down, Finn!” he snapped, keeping his eyes on the deserter at his feet and using his senses to locate the other. FN-2188 stood a couple paces away but surprisingly had not moved to intervene, although his blaster was in his hand and aimed at the ground just in case.

“Or what?” Finn asked, getting to his feet, his stance set, feet wide, hands up.

“Or we don't get to the Falcon like we're supposed to and Rose dies, how about that?” Ren challenged. “Or whatever other name you want to throw in my face.”

“And would that bother you, Solo? Is that why you're mad, because my friends might die?”

“My name is Kylo Ren,” Ren all but snarled, forgetting himself for a moment and bleeding off a little of the Force, just enough to blow Finn back a step as though he'd been surprised by a particularly insistent wind. Ren reached out, physically grabbing with his hand and pulling back toward him, drawing his power back into himself. “You can call me by my father's name and it won't change a damn thing.”

“If you sent those coordinates to the First Order right now they could wipe the Falcon off the face of the planet in seconds,” Finn said, dropping his hands as he stepped back towards Ren. “After that it'd be easy to lure Hux to wherever you are and kill him yourself. Then you're right back where you want to be.”

“Even Hux isn't that reckless.”

“You said yourself, he'd do anything if it meant getting to take you out in person.”

“You're wasting time,” Ren said, turning away, something tugging at his senses that he'd been ignoring for the last few seconds, something increasing in urgency. Finn moved to speak, but Ren threw up a hand to forestall him; he tried again and Ren turned back, snapping “Finn!” in a tone completely different from the one he'd been arguing in, a tone of warning that made Finn automatically reach for his blaster, FN-2188 already raising his. They were nearly too late; twin speeders came roaring at them seemingly from nowhere, approaching from the direction of this morning's First Order line, and Finn and FN-2188 had just enough time to get off a shot each and duck out of the way as the speeders fired back. Ren did not duck, standing his ground, relieved, almost, to have an outlet for the Force that had been blazing under his skin. The speeders' blaster shots had already been destined to go wide, aiming for the deserters instead of Ren, and he took advantage of that and aimed for the stormtrooper's chests with one sharp and decisive Force push. They stopped in midair as though they'd hit a wall but the speeders kept going, torn out from under their riders by their own speed as the stormtroopers dropped to earth. The riderless speeders shot past Ren as he called his blasters back to his hands, firing a shot each, felling the grounded stormtroopers as they struggled to their feet.

“Any more of them?” Finn asked as he and FN-2188 also got up, watching as the speeders each crashed, twin fireballs already some ways distant in the gloom of the canopy.

“Not yet,” Ren said, spreading his senses wide. The sense of urgency in the Force had abated but some portion remained. “More will be coming.”

“Let's go, then,” Finn said, and Ren nodded in agreement.

“But you really aren't going to pass out again, are you?” FN-2188 asked as all three of them turned back in the direction that led toward the Falcon, walking just a little more quickly now that they had an immediate threat as motivation.

“I don't think so,” Ren replied. It was impossible to be sure, with Rey doing who could tell what, but he could only hope.

“Want to share why you passed out in the first place?” Finn asked, his tone markedly more restrained now than it had been.

“Rey,” Ren said briefly, reviewing exactly what had happened, his sudden sense of her being physically near him for a split second, the overload in his head, the feeling in the plants all around him when he woke up. The feeling of them in Rey, and of Rey in them.

“Is she alright?”

“Yes. I think she was making friends,” he said with a wide, vague gesture.

“With who?”

Ren smiled, even though the deserters were behind him and neither of them would be able to see it. “The planet.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> https://how-do-i-turn-this-thing-off.tumblr.com/


	26. Ren and the deserters reach the Falcon

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The First Order gives chase

They hadn't gone much farther before Ren could felt more First Order troops at the edges of his senses, closing rapidly, at almost the exact same time he sensed the Millennium Falcon in the opposite direction, waiting where Poe had said it would be.

“They're on us,” he said briefly to the deserters, breaking into a run. He could sense them pulling their blasters but ignored his own, wishing more than ever he had his lightsaber with him as he reached into the Millennium Falcon instead. It wasn't easy to work through the schematics of a ship he hadn't been inside in years, much less ever operated, but the Corellian freighter was a simple, if depressingly outdated beast, and he located the power supply fairly easily, flashing the lights off and on and tripping the alarms. That ought to be enough to get Chewie's attention, but just in case he also investigated the route to the turret. They broke the cover of the canopy at full speed with the pack of First Order just behind them, the speeders leading the charge, but the moment before they could open fire Ren expended as much Force ability and focus as he could, activating the turret and rotating it towards himself.

“Down!” he shouted to the deserters, hitting the ground himself as the Falcon began to fire at their pursuers of its own accord. The First Order teams hadn't anticipated that and fell back immediately, the speeders circling in disarray, trading bolts with the ship that could do nothing to mitigate the damage already dealt by plasma cannon shots tearing through their ranks. The deserters moved to get up, instinctively taking advantage of the chaos, but Ren threw out a hand to stop them.

“Not yet,” he ordered, eyes on the Falcon. Chewie had reached the bridge and raised the ships shields, and Ren felt the exact moment he began to lower the boarding ramp.

“Now!” he said, leaping to his feet with a Force push, calling his blasters to each hand and firing behind them at a couple stormtroopers who were getting too close. The Force guided his shots and he cut through the leading edge of their ranks, leaving them no choice but to crouch or fall back, taking up defensive positions. The deserters shot with him, covering fire targeting the speeders that were trying to regroup, taking out one and damaging another. It bought them enough time to wheel back to the Falcon as its ramp hit the ground, crossing the last few meters and boarding.

“Take off, stay low!” Ren shouted, reaching the main corridor and turning a hard right to get to the bridge, hoping that Finn would have the good sense to get to the turret as he drew his own power away from it, needing the extra focus. Chewie shouted something in Wookie to the effect that he knew what to do and the Falcon rose into the air with a lurch as Ren reached him, throwing himself into the co-pilot's seat just as the turret started up again, getting off a few parting shots at the First Order troops beneath them as the engines fired, sending them streaking across the canopy so close to the upper leaves that they scraped against their plating. FN-2188 came in behind them, wordlessly handing Ren his scanner, display set to show the information Rey had given them.

“These are the coordinates,” Ren told Chewie, consulting the screen to be sure and punching them in so they'd show up on the pilot's display. “Poe's trying to get the Rebels off the radar; tell me you've still got some concussive shielding.” The keys stuck under his fingers as he typed, and out of the corner of his eye he noticed a couple bare wires hanging just above his head, the remnants of what looked like a configuration for a compressor, though he couldn't imagine why one would ever have been installed. The only thing the Falcon had going for it was its speed; it had been true when he'd sat here as a child and it was even more true now.

Chewie replied, though it wasn't immediately clear what he was saying and Ren had to concentrate to make sense of the basics of it. The First Order didn't exactly have a lot of Wookies hanging around. “Yes, I know,” he said, making an educated guess, “but they got thrown off course last night. Do you have shielding or not?” Chewie responded in a lukewarm affirmative just as Ren found it for himself and made sure it was fully engaged so the plants they were dragging across wouldn't do any damage, risking re-routing as much power as he could to shore up any gaps in what seemed like an extremely shaky system.

“Hey, my gun's down!” Finn called out, his voice tinny over the Falcon's intercom.

“One second,” Ren muttered, undoing the last part of what he'd done. “How about now?”

“Yeah, got it. What's the play?”

“We'll be locked on First Order radar inside of thirty seconds. We have to go to lightspeed,” Ren decided, looking at Chewie.

“What?!” Finn shouted over the intercom.

“We're coming back! But if we don't get out of range before the fleet has a lock on us we'll be blown to dust!”

“NO!” Finn replied, followed by shuffling sounds over the comms. “Don't you do it, Solo! Chewie!! Don't you do it!”

Chewie hesitated, looking over at Ren, and Ren locked eyes with the Wookie for the first time. He'd never expected a cozy reunion with the furball, considering, but the Wookie's expression, never easy to read under all that hair at the best of times, was now absolutely inscrutable. “Do it,” Ren said. Chewie turned away, reaching to the middle of the control panel and shoving the hyperdrive controls sideways. For a moment reality around the ship seemed to shift, the green canopy and the blue sky gumming together like a bleeding watercolor, and then they shot forward, out of the atmosphere and into the safety of open space, blasting into a tunnel made of starlight.

“NO!” Finn repeated, skidding onto the bridge just a moment too late to stop them, staring out the viewports. He lunged forward as if to grab the controls and turn the Falcon back around himself but FN-2188 anticipated him and was just a hair quicker, grabbing him around the waist, holding him back.

“Finn, listen to me!” Ren insisted, jumping to his feet and helping press Finn backwards in case he lunged again, which Ren could feel in the Force he was considering doing. “Listen!!” he repeated, grabbing Finn by the front of his jacket. “If we stay we'll get shot to hell and you know it.”

Finn's eyes snapped to Ren's, ablaze with panic and desperation, partially real, partially fueled by his fatigue, hands balled into fists but at least hesitating to use them. “We can make it,” he growled, but despite the fierceness of his tone in the Force he felt unsure.

“We can't,” Ren said coldly. “You want to tell me you know something I don't about the missiles and tracking systems of First Order Star Destroyers? We were lucky to even get away, if we hadn't taken them by surprise we would have gone to lightspeed with half our ass on fire.”

Finn shifted away from him, slapping Ren's hands off his jacket but not backing down. “Tell me you're going back for them,” he insisted, pointing back behind him in the vague direction of the planet they'd just left, his feeling in the Force cracking like he was about to break, vulnerability showing through. “You tell me we're going back, Solo.”

“Tell me that I'd leave them,” Ren challenged instead. “Look me in the eye and say it.” He stepped forward, deliberately crowding Finn's personal space, his head all but brushing the ceiling of the tiny cockpit. “Tell me that I'd leave her.”

The moment seemed to hover as though on the edge of the knife as they stared each other down, the silence absolute. Finn shook his head. “Not good enough,” he decided. “Not nearly good enough, Solo. You wouldn't leave THEM, not just her. Say it. Tell me that.”

“We're going back for them. All of them,” Ren conceded. “Every damn Rebel on that planet, even if the entire damn First Order fleet is in orbit when we do.” He hesitated a split second, so short a moment that he wasn't even sure the others could see it, before extending his hand, open and empty, offering to seal the deal. Finn hesitated too but took it, shaking once, hard.

“All of them,” Finn repeated.

“So from now on stow the shit, Rebel,” Ren said, letting go of his hand and forcing his tone to something lighter, more conciliatory. “And get some sleep. Don't hang around the cockpit or I'll shoot you myself.” He turned away and sat back in the co-pilot's chair, but could sense the deserters hesitating. Thankfully they decided to leave without saying anything more, for which his raw, extremely over-taxed nerves were grateful. He fiddled with some controls, turning off the concussion shields now that they were out of immediate danger of hitting something solid, checking the fuel levels, re-learning how this freighter worked. Finally he looked toward Chewie, who he could feel watching him. The Wookie tilted his head, studying Ren, then made a sound that was both accusatory and sad and translated to something along the lines of 'what happened'?

“General Hux decided to take advantage of a momentary absence on my part to execute the overthrow he's been planning since Snoke died, if not since he met me,” Ren replied, his throat suddenly tight as he looked away, not sure that was precisely what the Wookie was asking- in fact, almost certain it wasn't- but it was the easiest part of it to answer right now. “The Rebels and I have a temporary agreement that will get them off this planet and put me back at the helm. With any luck, we'll be able to see both goals through fairly soon.”

Chewie replied and Ren frowned, concentrating, trying to parse through it. “I don't know how exactly,” he admitted, “but we can't waste too much time. Hux is calling up the fleet; every moment we spend on this heading puts another ship between us and the others. I'm going to go get some sleep too,” he added, standing. “We'll figure out the details later.” Chewie nodded, turning back to the controls, but the deep well of sadness Ren could sense in him made him stop for a moment, putting a hand on the back of the pilot's chair, wondering what to say, if there was anything he could say. Chewie turned toward him slightly, as though waiting, sealing his fate in a way. Now he had to say something. Now he had to at least try. Ren took a deep breath, searching his feelings for what was true.

“What I did I can't come back from,” he said softly, gripping the pilot's chair a little harder than he meant to, as though he needed to hold on to something for this. “I know that. That's why I did it. But Han--.” He stopped at the name, looking away, needing to swallow before he went on. “Han is something I regret.”

Chewie said something that made Ren shake his head, something simple enough that even with his shaky grasp of Wookie there was no mistaking it, something that sent him down the corridor back into the ship before he could hear another word even remotely like it, but the determined ululation followed him, in his ears, in his mind, a stab into his already tattered emotions like a shard of glass. 'I've missed you, Ben'.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lemme just rip your heart out a little ;)
> 
> My tumblr:
> 
> https://how-do-i-turn-this-thing-off.tumblr.com/


	27. The Falcon group’s rescue plan

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It involves mostly luck, as so many of the Rebel's plans do

“I thought this was the main Rebel ship?” FN-2188 demanded, standing in the middle of the Falcon's main hold in nothing but his black underclothes, arms crossed indignantly. “They don't even keep one spare uniform around?”

“Your first mistake was trying to use the words 'Rebel' and 'uniform' in the same sentence,” Ren commented, watching him stalk back to holographic game table and throw himself into one of the seats moodily. The table was currently deactivated, functioning as just a table where Ren had been sitting with a cup of hot Gatalentan tea, attempting to meditate, when FN-2188 had stormed in to rustle around in every locker the Falcon had. How the deserter even had the energy for such activity, Ren had no idea. He'd slept well himself, considering how exhausted he'd been to start with, but had only allowed one three hour cycle before he got up again. He certainly wasn't interested in storming about anything.

“Finn's not up yet?” FN-2188 said, glancing over at him.

“Not that I'm aware.”

“What do you think my name should be?”

Ren blinked in surprise, then looked away. “Nothing Finn's suggested so far.”

“I wonder how he got his,” FN-2188 sighed, flipping over on his back and staring up at the ceiling. “He didn't say.”

“Poe gave it to him.”

“Poe?” FN-2188 repeated, half lurching back up into a sitting position in his surprise as he stared at Ren. “Poe Dameron? General Poe Dameron?”

“Is there another Poe that you know of?”

“Lucky bastard,” FN-2188 growled, lying back down. “Well, I can't outdo that.”

“Yes, such a great honor,” Ren muttered, rolling his eyes. FN-2188 pretended not to hear and for a moment there was silence, long enough to allow Ren to sip his tea and try to concentrate on staying awake. He should be thinking of ways out of their current predicament but at the moment he was content to try and time when they should turn around and head back. What they would do when they got there he wasn't quite up to tackling yet.

“Maybe Rey would name me,” FN-2188 mused after a while.

“What?” Ren replied, jerked out of his musings, looking over to frown at him. “Why?”

“Well she's a Jedi. So that's got to outrank just a General.”

“She's not a Jedi,” Ren contradicted immediately, tripping over the word like it left a bad taste in his mouth. “She's a Force user, that's all.”

“I heard Luke Skywalker trained her himself. I heard she's secretly his daughter and he hid her on Jakku like Obi-Wan Kenobi hid him when Vader was trying to hunt him down. I heard she's the most powerful Jedi ever and that Luke actually showed up on Crait to knight her before he died.”

“'To knight her',” Ren repeated bitterly, draining his tea in one. “If I had a week I couldn't begin to unravel everything wrong with that story.”

“Stormtroopers gossip night and day,” someone said from the hold's back entrance, and they both turned to see Finn coming in, toweling off his hair. “What has FN-2188 been telling you?”

“The usual,” FN-2188 said with a shrug, still lying flat on his back. “Kylo Ren was just about to insist to me that Rey's not his cousin.”

“She's not,” Ren said, glaring at him.

“That would be weird,” Finn agreed, nudging FN-2188 to get him to make room so Finn could slide onto the bench too. “You have checked, right? I mean, you might want to be sure before you...” He made a vague back and forth gesture with one hand that made Ren's hand twitch, wanting to reach for a lightsaber that wasn't there. “Relax, Solo,” Finn said, grinning knowingly as Ren continued to glare at them both. “We don't actually think you'd have sex with your own cousin. Well, FN-2188 might,” he added as an afterthought. “But he hasn't had time to get to know you like I have.”

“If getting to know him like you have means we have to try to kill each other a few times, I'd rather not,” FN-2188 muttered, sitting up, his hair sticking out in all directions. “There's not a single Rebel uniform on this whole damn ship,” he continued to Finn in a personally offended tone.

“Yeah, Rebels don't really do uniforms. Just put on anything that seems clean and is within two sizes of what you usually wear. It's been pretty picked over but there might be something. What about you, Solo?” he asked, glancing over at Ren. “I don't know how we're doing on black clothes made for giants, but you never know.”

“No,” Ren said in an abrupt tone, still annoyed.

“Well at least wash yours before you see Rey again,” Finn said, wrinkling his nose in an exaggerated fashion. “Speaking of, what are the plans on that front?”

“Go back, get them out,” Ren said with a shrug. “I'm not sure this bucket's capable of anything much more complicated than that.”

“That's it?” Finn demanded as FN-2188 also looked at Ren askance. “That's your big plan?”

“And what brilliant strategy have you come up with?” Ren asked, raising his eyebrows at him. “I'm willing to hear it out. Go ahead.”

Finn frowned, looking at the table, tracing one of the squares of the game board with his finger. Just when Ren belatedly realized he did actually seem to have something in mind, Finn looked up. “I think we have an opening, actually,” he said. “If we can drift in quietly, put the planet between ourselves and the bulk of their forces, we might not show up on their radar dramatically enough for them to take a look. The thing is, they probably think all the Rebels are aboard, if they've lost track of the other group. They won't think we have any reason to come back.”

“And how do we 'drift in quietly'?” Ren asked. “Because if we enter the atmosphere without firing our engines we could end up crash-landing anywhere.”

“Tractor beam,” Finn replied. “We might have to drag ourselves right or left a bit, but it'll get us close enough for the Rebels to notice. We don't have to be exactly on target to do the job.”

Ren considered that for a moment. The Falcon's tractor beam wasn't big or heavily powered enough to be more than a blip on First Order radar, and that was on planets where the surface wasn't emitting a continuous energy signature of its own. With the canopy in the way any unusual fluctuation might just be read as a natural phenomenon. But if they were too far off course then using a tractor beam would be agonizingly slow if that was all they had to maneuver themselves back to where the Rebels would be waiting.

“Our entry would have to be pretty on target, or we won't have the time we need to get under cover before we're spotted,” Ren decided. “Even if only by line of sight, there should be enough ships in the sky to see us eventually.”

“Let's hope the Force is with us then,” Finn replied, looking at Ren in a peculiar way Ren didn't like at all.

“If you're suggesting I'm going to be able to do something with the Force to guide this ship--,” he began to say, but Finn cut him off.

“What, you can cause earthquakes but not light breezes?”

“That wasn't an earthquake and you know it.”

“Fine, you convinced a whole forest to commit mass suicide so we could escape. Better?”

“Is that what you did?” FN-2188 asked, looking flabbergasted by this frankly ludicrous assessment.

“The forest was already upset, I just gave it a target,” Ren said. FN-2188's expression seemed to suggest he very strongly thought that explanation was neither here nor there, while Finn just looked self-satisfied. “Let's focus on piloting this thing properly, instead of hoping I'll be able to move an entire freighter on my own,” Ren suggested sarcastically. “If we can stay even remotely on target we should be able to attract the Rebels to us, it's unlikely they'll have many other ships flying by that close to the surface.”

“And Rey will feel you, right?” FN-2188 suggested.

“Yes, most likely,” Ren said shortly, standing. “I'm going to the cockpit to discuss whether this is even feasible with Chewie, since he'll know his own capabilities and the tractor beam's strength and area of influence best.” He left before either of the deserters could do anything more to irritate him, though the prospect of an extended conversation with the Wookie wasn't much better. To his surprise- and relief- the cockpit was manned only by a familiar astromech droid, with Chewie nowhere in sight.

“Hey, R2-D2,” Ren said, taking the empty pilot's chair. “Is Chewie getting some sleep?” The droid whistled an affirmative, then used a few beeps and whirs that made Ren smile. “Yes, I'm happy to see you too.” It was much easier to understand the droid- the First Order had quite a few droids, though none as expressive as the elderly R2 units- and he was relieved to have a simple conversation with a simple thing, at last.

R2 beeped a few more things as Ren fiddled with the controls, turning the Falcon back on it's course and carefully laying in a starter heading. “No, Rey is still on the planet. We're going back right now.” R2 had several complimentary things to say there, and Ren smiled again. “Yes, I like Rey too,” he agreed. He'd forgotten, or else he'd never properly considered, that R2-D2 was in some ways the original reason Rey had gotten drawn into this whole mess, into the galaxy-wide drama that was the war with the Rebels. If ever there was a droid that was favored by the Force this one must be it, this one and the BB unit he'd been pursuing when he and Rey had first met. He didn't begrudge the circumstances exactly, but at the same time he could almost wish Rey had gotten drawn in by First Order droids, and had skipped the business of falling in with the Rebels altogether, but that wasn't what the Force had intended. Would they have had the same bond, if things had happened in a different way? Would they have ended up as close and yet as far apart as they were? The bond had always been inevitable, that he believed; it had taken root the moment they'd met, and no circumstances probably would have changed that. And even if Rey had started in the First Order, would she have stayed? There was a lot about the organization she found objectionable, and not all of it was prejudice passed down from the Rebel's hands.

R2 whistled in a soft, questioning way, and Ren shook his head. “I don't know where BB-8 is.” More whistling. “No, I didn't see him with Poe.” An introspective whistle and some beeps, suggesting that R2 concluded BB-8 must be with Leia. Ren shrugged, privately trying to take in that particular name being said so flippantly, so casually. In many ways the strangest thing about being with the Rebels by far was how little regard they had for the past. Subjects that were absolutely verboten within the ranks of the First Order- where Ren had come from, who he had been before, really anything to do with his former life at all- were just tossed back and forth by the Rebels any old time, constantly throwing him off a little as he tried to adjust. It was patently odd how they never seemed to care or even notice, while he had to ride out every impact as though he, too, hardly noticed.

The Force told him Chewie was approaching, snapping him out of his reverie as he focused on the controls again, trying to finish what he'd started. “Almost done,” he said out loud as the Wookie entered the cockpit, but Chewie made a sound indicating he didn't mind, taking the co-pilot's chair instead, then asked if there was a plan. Ren explained as best he could, asking a couple questions about whether or not the Falcon was even capable of the kind of maneuver they were planning. Chewie seemed offended by that, and Ren threw up his hands.

“Alright, alright!” he shouted over the Wookie's protests. “It won't be the first miracle the Falcon's ever pulled off, but don't expect me to just take for granted that we can.” Chewie suggested that the Falcon had been good enough for Ren's parents and should be good enough for him; Ren managed to avoid making a face at that with extreme effort. “Let's just see how much power we can feed the tractor beam before life support goes offline, alright?” he asked, shaking his head at the control panel as though it was the controls that were giving him a rough time. Chewie was hardly done though, at least changing direction with his pointed commentary, and Ren was reminded how little the Wookie knew about the circumstances that had brought him here.

“Rey is... important because she's a Force user, like me,” he tried to explain in response to the dialogue. “We have a bond, in the Force. We can feel each other's feelings, even across great distances. We can even see each other and talk to each other sometimes.” Chewie's response equated to 'but you're trying to kill her?' and Ren frowned. “Not her, specifically. The First Order won't be able to bring peace to the galaxy while the Rebels are still doing their best to foul up everything we're trying to accomplish.” The derogatory comments this invited were only to be expected and Ren listened as well as he could, frowning.

“I don't agree with kidnapping children, either,” he replied, managing to resist pointing out that given how young he'd been when his parents had handed him off to Luke, never to see him again, that should be fairly obvious. “It's one of the reasons Hux has wanted to overthrow me so badly. Well, so much more, anyway. We've had quite a few disagreements about that, among other things. Slavery, too.” He hesitated, hands stilling on the controls. He hadn't meant to say that out loud. There was no reason to reveal that to the enemy, and quite a few reasons not to-- for instance, the very real danger that they could spread that information to a few parties that didn't have it yet and make sure he suddenly had a real insurrection on his hands.

Chewie asked another question, a softer, more inquiring one. “I've thought it for a long time,” Ben admitted. “Slavery shouldn't even need to exist anymore, not with droids that can do the same work without any risk to themselves. It's a little more expensive and technical to automate the process, but using the labor of sentient beings instead makes them automatically expendable, and I don't think it's necessary for the First Order to have to go along with that. Hux disagrees, again,” he added sourly, “but Hux and a few others have made a tidy profit from some very wealthy traders that they'd rather not give up.” Chewie had nothing to say to that and Ren leaned back in his chair for a moment, watching the stars streak by. One of the reasons he'd kept those particular arguments private, apart from the danger of the information leaking, was that he hadn't wanted Rey to discover his intentions until he was sure he'd worked the whole thing out and it was well past the point of no return. He thought- well, hoped- well, was at least partially sure- that she'd be pleased by it even if it was something the First Order was doing, but it would all be a bit useless if she discovered the effort prematurely and then something happened to set him back again. If anything a delay like that would probably make her more against the First Order rather than less.

“All ready to go?” Finn asked, entering the cockpit behind him.

“As ready as we can be,” Ren asked, shaking himself out of his reverie a second time and bending over the controls. “We'll have to rely on some luck, but we've got decent odds if everything goes according to plan.”

'Never tell me the odds', Chewie quoted at him. Ren rolled his eyes. Yes, ignoring statistically likely outcomes. What a foolproof strategy for success. Not while the Falcon was under his watch, that was for certain; he'd run the numbers until his eyes bled if that was what it took to make this ancient cobbled-together dump with engines land close enough to Rey to let him get to her before the First Order could.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> FN-2188 has a bit of a celebrity crush, diddums <3
> 
> My tumblr:
> 
> https://how-do-i-turn-this-thing-off.tumblr.com/


	28. One-of-us

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rey strikes

The darkness of midnight was profound underneath the canopy but Rey found it more comforting than forbidding. The plants, which had no concept of sleep, seemed to watch over her as the Rebels passed beneath them, their broad leaves reaching across their path just that much farther, sheltering them under their cover.

“It should be right ahead,” Poe muttered, watching his scanner screen. Rey glanced over at him, confirming what her Force sense was already telling her; there was nothing there.

“How long can we afford to wait?” Sergeant muttered back, also looking at his scanner.

Poe glanced at Rey hopefully but she could only shake her head. She felt nothing unusual from Ren except perhaps some small amount of nerves, which she couldn't account for but didn't seem to indicate anything truly worrisome. “Do you think you can contact him again?” Poe asked, keeping his voice low so only Sergeant could hear.

“Maybe,” she said doubtfully. She was a little tired- not too much, but starting to feel it all the same- and something told her a second bond conversation might not take tonight. There was also something about Ren and how he felt at the moment, something intent and focused, that warned her away from it. “I don't think it's a good time to distract him.”

“Should I even bother asking what that means?” Poe sighed, checking his scanner screen again. Rey shrugged and he shook his head. “We should have been right on top of it by now, or they should have been right on top of us. The clearing is just ahead.” And so it was-- even as he said it they emerged into a natural gap in the plants, a small circle of rock and sand that seemed to indicate there had once been water here.

“A good time to check the plating,” Sergeant said stolidly as they all stopped, looking around as though hoping the Falcon would appear from behind a shrub. He moved off, gathering up Rose as he went and leaving Rey and Poe to talk, not that she had any idea what to say.

“He is close, Poe,” she assured weakly. “I can feel that he's close. Much closer than he was.”

“Can you give me an ETA on that?”

“I... I think he's coming. It's difficult to say.”

“We can't stay out in the open too long,” Poe decided. “The First Order doesn't need the extra time to find us and I'm not interested in giving it to them. But if we have to spend another night underground, I don't know where that puts us tomorrow. I want to give Ren and Finn every chance but a moving target's just harder to hit.”

“I'll try to reach for him,” Rey promised reluctantly, hoisting her pack higher on her shoulders and turning away, but at that same moment something in the bond surged and she paused mid-step. It was as if the Force had moved somewhere nearby, physically shifting like a creature might shift in its dreams, seemingly aimless but with an inscrutable purpose of its own. She looked right and left, trying to discern where the feeling was coming from.

“Tell me he's here,” Poe said, watching her.

“I-- maybe. I can't--.” She stopped again, turning a full circle, searching the gloom as the feeling that had drawn her attention flexed again, then became a word in her head. _Rey_.

“He's here!” she reported immediately, turning toward where the bond wanted to lead her. It had come from their right and slightly ahead. “This way.”

“We're moving, people,” Poe said, wheeling his arm in a wide arc so everyone could see. “Home stretch.” Even as he said it Rey frowned, feeling something else, something that made her Force sense suddenly come to attention. She called Ben's lightsaber to her hand but didn't fire the blade.

“Blasters out,” she muttered to Poe.

“First Order?” he asked, instantly reaching for his holster.

“Yes. I think...” she looked around, still moving toward where she could feel Ben waiting, as an icy cold certainty formed in the pit of her stomach. “They're all around us.”

He swore, hissing the order down the line as Rey continued, pushing towards where Ben was. _Ben, they're here_, she tried to say, not knowing if she could get that much of a thought through. It turned out she could, because he replied immediately.

_I'm here_. And so he was, standing in the distance at the edge of her Force sight, and she broke into a run just as the first speeders reached them, calling her blaster to her free hand as she went, then pulling her arm back and throwing his saber to him with all her might.

Their enemies were on them between one breath and the next. First Order speeders led First Order stormtroopers on both sides, as if it had been planned, as if they'd walked directly into an ambush, converging so quickly that even with her Force sense she'd had very little warning. She skidded to a halt and stood her ground, firing over and over again as fast as she could, every shot guided by the Force, holding nothing back, but for every blaster bolt that reached its target two more First Order bolts shot past her. The Rebels had all hit the forest floor, instinctively going for the only cover they could, except Poe who stood back to back with her, also trading shots for all he was worth.

A blaze of red light lit up the darkness and Ben was there, sweeping into the fray with the blade moving and leaping in his hands like a live thing, cutting through every obstacle in its way. In his hands it showed its true power and he became a living shield between them and their attackers as he stood to Rey's side, buying the three of them a vital moment to allow them to speak.

“We need to draw them off!” he shouted to Rey above the noise, then looked at Poe. “The Falcon's in that direction!” he said, pointing back the way he'd come. “Go and we'll follow you!” Poe nodded- there wasn't time for dispute- and Ben looked back at Rey, making sure. She nodded too, and together they moved to the side, away from Poe, Ben taking up his position at Rey's back.

It was frustrating-- it was so frustrating. Even though she seemed to have regained most of her strength, despite her persistent shakiness in the Force, with only one blaster she could do so little. She scooped up another from a fallen Rebel as they went, firing from both hands, but it wasn't one tenth of what Ben was accomplishing, his skill, his speed. With her own lightsaber in her hand she could have equaled him but now she couldn't do much more than guard his back. The diversion seemed to be working, at least; as they went the First Order troops turned towards them, concentrating their fire, and as strong as they both were, and as strong as the Force was with them, she could feel already the certainty of their fate. They were outgunned too heavily, too decisively; if they couldn't retreat they would eventually be overwhelmed.

They passed the last of the Rebels and stood their ground as Poe's people retreated, the Rebels trading some shots of their own but mostly just running. It was all they could do, and as Rey and Ren began to follow, across the same ground they'd just covered, she felt the Force rising in her like a tide and could have screamed from how useless it was, how little it meant when she had no way to channel it, no way to turn it against their enemies. What could she accomplish, like this, with just blasters? A few Force pushes, swiping at them like an angry and wild thing with its claws out?

Something went wrong. She felt it before she saw it, as the blaster bolts slowed, as the First Order seemed to back off, just a little. It gave Rey a chance to look over her shoulder to where the wrongness was and she saw the Falcon in the gloom, breaching the darkness like an oceangoing ship cleaving the sea. And between them and it, stormtroopers, pouring in from every side, their white helmets gleaming, their blasters up. The Rebels had stopped, also in back-to-back formation, but for every one of them there were a dozen stormtroopers either already around them or on the way. The Falcon sat under siege, its shields and ramps up, unable to help them; if it allowed any way to board, the First Order would swarm it too.

“They want to take us alive!” she risked shouting to Ben, and felt him acknowledge it in the bond even though he couldn't risk looking over his shoulder. She could imagine his face in her mind, dark with determination, his scar a thin shadow from forehead to cheek as he fought in the light of the blasters, red and dark and red and dark again. It didn't matter, it couldn't help; when they reached the Rebels they would all be caught. It was inevitable.

Something in her cried out, frenzied and helpless, raging and fearful, and something else answered. The plants. The plants were with her, their consciousness all around her, and as before the power and strength of the Force now in her made her visible to them, and they recognized her. One-of-us, they were saying, and as her feelings reached them they were swept up into the canopy's endless, cyclical electric tide, magnified until the plants swayed with it, angry as she was angry, helpless as she was helpless. They wanted to tear up their roots and throw themselves down- they wanted to sacrifice their lives and end the common enemy they shared with her- but there were too many beings down below, and some were her friends and some were not, and they could not destroy a few without destroying them all.

The Force swelled within Rey all the same, pounding through her veins, hotter than blood, more vital than life itself, and finally she understood. Without knowing how she knew, she understood. They were nearly to the Rebels- the stormtroopers were still firing but more slowly, more loosely- and she had just enough time.

_Help me_, she begged the plants, showing them what she wanted in her mind as she turned to Ben, shouting, “The lightsaber!” He blocked a couple more shots and turned back to hand it to her just as she evaded his movement, reaching out with her bare hand to grasp, not the hilt, but the blade.

One-of-us, the plants seemed to sigh, and all at the same time she felt the blinding surge of Ben's sudden, sharp fear for her, a fear that was answered again in the Rebels as they watched, and she felt the crackling, lightning-like power of the blade, and the same in the ground under her feet, the static on her skin as the plants' own electricity engulfed her. And the blade answered. And she wrapped her hand around the burning plasma, shielded by the Force in her, through her, and reached her other hand out, and the two twin powers joined together and followed her intent, and attacked.

It was as though the whole world had erupted. The bolts surged and struck, the red bolts of the blade, the white bolts of this planet, sometimes as one, sometimes separately, and the First Order was blasted back on both sides. There was so much energy in the soldiers and Rey could see it, dazzling her sight with its sheer density, the cores of the stormtrooper's blasters, the mics and earpieces threaded through their headsets, every battery and every wire laid as bare as it had been when she'd scavenged the Imperial parts they had been designed after, the models that had come before. The speeder troopers rode on mounts of light; the bolts found them first, leaping one to another then called down to the ground troopers. The First Order became a conduit, and as the energy descended it brought up more from the ground, surging and thundering, a cacophony of deadly light to strike the whole world down.

She was locked into place, her concentration absolute, her outreached arm guiding, shielding, destroying. The First Order could barely panic, could not retreat, had nowhere to go; it was this world itself against them, and Rey only its guide, channeling red and white in a great arc, circling the Falcon then coming back around the Rebels, sizzling and popping as the stormtroopers cooked in their own suits and the speeders fell out of the sky, impacting the ground so hard she felt the shudder in the soles of her feet.

_REY!_ Ben was shouting in the bond, and she realized he'd been shouting in her ear but she hadn't heard him. _Ben_, she responded, but barely, able to expend only enough focus for the single word. He wanted her to move- he wanted her to come with him- she could feel it now that he'd called her attention to it, but he didn't know, he hadn't realized how many more were in the trees, how many more beyond their sight and their senses that the lightning could show her now, their great machines, their troop carriers and gunner turrets and things she had no name for, hulking, waiting, vulnerable to her, all of it, all of it, vulnerable to her. But if she didn't move, she realized, he intended to risk touching her and diverting that power into himself to drag her with him, and that he could not do. He didn't understand it like she did, and he wasn't One-of-us like she was.

One step. She moved one step, just to show him she could, but felt it disrupt some portion of the power. She wouldn't be able to reach all of their enemies, not if she left now, but it was more important, surely, to follow him? And their friends, their friends, where were they? She risked peeling away a little more focus to reach for them and found them on the Falcon, waiting, watching. The ramp to the holding bay had lowered; the Rebels, a way instinctively carved out for them by Rey herself, had boarded. Only Ben remained with her, holding the saber up with both hands to support her hand on it, but at the same time urging her ahead in the bond.

She had to go. One-of-us, one-of-us, the plants called, victorious, grateful, ruthless, vengeful, needing her still to guide them. But her life was not of this planet, her power not limitless as theirs was, and already it was draining and Rey realized she could not stay. Another step, another, another, Ben staying next to her, the threat of his barely-restrained instinct to grab her and run pushing her on. As they drew near the Falcon she realized it was time to let go; she couldn't board with this energy, or despite whatever her strength and intentions were it would join with the ship and destroy it. She stopped one last time on the threshold of the ramp, siphoning the red and white power away, out of the air, out of her body, back into the earth and the saber it had come from, her vision clearing as the light retreated, leaving devastated First Order soldiers in its wake, rank upon rank of them, beyond what she could see or sense. There were more out there that she hadn't managed to destroy, but too far away to hurt them now. She released the blade and lowered her arms and it was done. Ben waited not a breath more before pushing the button on his lightsaber, the blade winking out of existence as his arm circled her waist, pulling her aboard. A moment later the Falcon rose into the sky, and as they retreated the world blurred from plants to stars, and the stars became a tunnel of light.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bet you've never seen Force lightning done quite like this ;)
> 
> My tumblr:
> 
> https://how-do-i-turn-this-thing-off.tumblr.com/


	29. On the Falcon Ren helps Rey recover

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Unstable in the Force, and unable to contain the power still inside her from the Force lightning she has only recently used, Rey must turn to Ren for help

The Millennium Falcon. As the ramp sealed behind them and the forward airlock opened, allowing the Rebels access into the main body of the ship, Rey passed through the ranks of the Rebels and inside without looking left or right, pausing only to drop her pack as she went, feeling Ben do the same as he followed behind her, the other Rebels staying put, silent and watchful, allowing themselves to be left behind. Some distant part of her was grateful for that, grateful that they somehow understood, as if they, too, could feel in the Force the pull, the binding pull between her and him that they were only just barely resisting now. Rey clung to that pull as every other bit of her seemed to be coming apart; she’d shed the raw lightning but the Force power that had drawn and directed it was still in her, the strength of that power remaining at fever pitch, making her fingers tremble, making her hair want to stand on end. She didn’t know what to do with it now, how to handle and control this extreme and alarming form of the Force she’d built up that suddenly had nowhere to go, no way to be released, nothing to connect to. All she could do was move forward, into the ship, through the main hold and into the hall that led to the engineering access ladder. Down below there was just enough room for two people and that was where she led Ben, her hands so shaky on the rungs as she descended that she nearly slipped off. And it wasn’t just her hands, she realized– she was trembling all over, holding the power tightly inside her, where it was safely contained even though it made her feel as though she’d shiver into pieces.

What if it could still hurt Ben? He was already descending the ladder but Rey had just enough time to start to reconsider, start to back away. It was far too little, far too late– the moment his feet hit the walkway his arms were around her, his feeling in the Force was around her, as a Force push from him closed the hatch above and sealed it. She tried for less than a breath to resist, to hold, but he was in the bond and the bond was inside her and the moment they were together that conduit opened. Ben didn’t hesitate, didn’t waver, accepting it all.

It was as though he was his saber– no, better, much, much better than that. The saber could create and direct energy but couldn’t absorb it, couldn’t disarm it. Ben let the excess destroying Rey into himself, meeting it with his own strength and determination, the wild and burning power she couldn’t bear alone spreading evenly between them, becoming a tempest they shared. It waxed as bright as an exploding star for a moment, a final crashing, burning wave that washed over them both, but together they could withstand the tide and around them it waned, and settled, and finally, finally, rejoined their power in the Force and was gone. But Ben remained, Ben exactly as he had been before, as he always was, and in the empty space left behind he gave her all of himself in the bond, and Rey pressed her face into his shoulder and closed her eyes and gave all of herself as well, holding nothing back as the bond seemed to engulf them completely.

How long they stood like that, it was impossible to tell. Whether time even still had them in its grasp or they had moved beyond it, Rey couldn’t know and didn’t care. They seemed to exist in a space of their own, and in Ben’s thoughts Rey could follow along with what he’d seen, what she’d done. The incredible display of death and destruction; and him, that first moment, watching her reach for the blade, the mindless and absolute terror of seeing her fingers wrap around the burning plasma, a memory that was now shaded with reproach.

_Sorry_, she told him in his mind, smiling into his shoulder. Only Ben, only Ben could have seen her do all that, could have stood with her as she simultaneously electrocuted who could say how many enemies all around them, and be most concerned with the comparatively minor issue that she might have burned her hand. _I’m fine_, she assured him.

“This time,” he grumbled out loud, but she could tell he didn’t really mean it.

“I don’t plan on doing it again,” she murmured back. Even without words his feelings in the bond seemed to say I SHOULD THINK NOT, and she smiled again. There seemed so much to catch up on, so much they needed to tell each other, but there was an uneasiness in him that drew her attention first. “What is it?” Rey asked, leaning back to examine his face.

“Rey…” he sighed, unwrapping his arms from around her to cup her face between his palms, looking down at her. “That was- the power you just–.” He shook his head, looking away then back at her again. “There were light users who used Force lightning occasionally, but not many, and never anything like that. And to fuel that power with the energy of the life around us, instead of taking it from yourself– that’s Dark side, without a doubt.”

Rey stiffened, unable to help it, even though there was nothing in Ben’s tone to suggest he meant it in a triumphant or accusatory way. If anything he seemed upset about it, though surely that was exactly the kind of thing he’d been hoping for all this time. “I didn’t take the power,” she pointed out, fighting to keep her voice even, to stay next to him and work the question through instead of automatically pulling away. “The plants gave it to me. I asked.”

“You used their life force to kill. On a massive scale.”

“Their life force isn’t the same as other beings, I didn’t use it up, or drain it. Nothing died.”

“You don’t know that. Rey,” he sighed, leaning towards her as she frowned at him, keeping her close, capturing her with the sympathetic look in his eyes, the heartbreaking sincerity in the bond, as he tried to show her that he knew, that he understood. “You saved all of us. You saved all our lives. Whatever Hux wanted to do next when he captured us, it would have eventually ended in public execution. Does it matter if the technique was Light or Dark? Does it matter if the Jedi Order passed a censure forbidding Force lightning centuries ago?”

“I’m not Dark, Ben,” Rey whispered. Unbelievably, he smiled, a sad and lonely smile, like he’d been waiting a long time to have this conversation but knew already what the answer would be.

“But I am, Rey. So even if you’re not, I’m asking if it matters.” She stared at him, not sure what to say, what to think. Every time she’d done something Ben or the Jedi Order would define as Dark before it hadn’t felt terrible or wrong, and this was no different. Whether or not the Force lightning was technically Dark, Rey couldn’t bring herself to regret it or to feel somehow ashamed or fearful of what she’d done, even if some vague part of her thought she was probably supposed to.

“I don’t know,” she admitted after a long and anxious silence where they searched each other out in the bond, Ben as though bracing himself, Rey as though she could finally find, hidden somewhere in this moment, an answer that had so far eluded them both as well as countless generations before.

“You don’t have to decide right now,” Ben said, reading her conflict in her feelings, if not just in her face, in her voice, in the confession. Or maybe to spare himself a blow for just a little longer if she decided against him– she couldn’t tell how he truly felt in the bond, there was so much suddenly mixed up between them right now.

“Why did you have to say it, Ben?” she asked, gently pulling his hands away from her face and wrapping them back around her waist. “I’ve missed you.”

“I’ve missed you, Rey,” he agreed, his expression softening. She put her hands up on his shoulders and stood on her toes to kiss him, but while their lips were still an inch away from each other someone pounded on the hatch cover above their head, making the whole space ring like a bell as they both jumped, coming apart, Ben’s hand going automatically to his lightsaber, Rey’s hands to her blasters.

“Debriefing in five!” Finn called from the hallway above them, his voice muffled but unmistakable. “Don’t make me come in there after you!”

“Please let me kill him,” Ben sighed, dropping his hand from his saber hilt as Finn’s footsteps sounded up above, retreating back down the corridor.

“Next time,” Rey promised, biting back her own annoyance as she turned towards the ladder rungs. She wouldn’t mind taking a swipe at Finn herself, given his terrifically bad timing, but in the next moment Ben caught her hands up in his, pulling her back towards him. “We have to go, Ben,” she reminded him, smiling all the same.

“He said we have five minutes.”

“We can’t keep them all waiting for us.”

“Then we have four,” he insisted, tilting his head down toward Rey and pressing his lips to hers. The kiss drew her in as if he’d wrapped the Force around her and physically pulled her the rest of the way to him– which he had also done, she realized as they pressed together, arms around each other again. It wasn’t the same perfect unity they’d had before, both of them holding back just a little now that the unresolved question of the Dark Force lingered between them, but it was sweet and welcoming and Rey melted into it. If she could stay like this with Ben forever she almost thought she wouldn’t care about the war anymore, the First Order or the Rebels, the battles, the losses, the victories. She found herself wishing, as she kissed Ben, as Ben kissed her, that there was a way to resolve all of this and then shed it, to find a way that would allow them to leave it behind with as little regret or pain as possible. But the Rebels were too much a part of her and the First Order was too much a part of him, and this close together, this intimately together, she could feel in the bond that he was thinking exactly the same thing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Rey's very, very borderline by Jedi standards right now; technically you're not ever supposed to use the Force to kill directly, which is why lightsabers exist at all. During the heyday of the Jedi order what she just did would be frowned upon heavily, and she would likely have had to face some serious censure for it
> 
> My tumblr:
> 
> https://how-do-i-turn-this-thing-off.tumblr.com/


	30. Poe gives his orders

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Aboard the Falcon the Rebels and Ren start to prepare for the next leg of their journey, both together and apart

They went back up into the ship a little later than they should have but still far sooner than Rey would have liked, and by the time they entered the main hold everyone was already waiting for them, Finn and Rose, Poe and Sergeant, R2-D2 and Chewie. Rey smiled when she saw the Wookie, immediately going over to hug him, R2 greeting her with a series of friendly whistles. It had to be a short reunion; two spaces had been left open for them and Poe looked unusually serious, glancing back and forth between Rey and Ben when they sat.

“Glad you could join us,” Finn quipped, but Rose shook her head at him, clearly also noting Poe's expression.

“We lost four guys out there,” Poe said without ceremony, his tone matter-of-fact and solemn. “Good guys. My guys. I think we would have lost a lot more if the First Order had been trying to kill instead of capture us, and none of us would have made it out at all if it weren't for you two. So thank you for that,” he told them, looking at Ben in particular, who said nothing. “But,” he continued, looking back at Rey, “what the hell just happened?”

She explained as best she could, about the plants being sentient, about their electrical field being open to manipulation through Rey's communion with them, about the particular crackling lightning of Ben's blade being able to control that field and direct it. Some of it Ben knew already just from being in her head and being able to feel in the Force what she was doing next to him, but he listened along closely and she could all but feel him digesting every word and filing it away to analyze later. It wasn't really a very long story and Rey tried not to make it sound as though she'd known what she was doing or particularly planned it, and by the end Poe was frowning more than ever.

“So it's not something you'll be able to do again, you think?” he asked.

“It nearly overwhelmed her doing it this time,” Ben said before Rey could reply. “If I hadn't been here to take the excess afterwards she would have blown the ship apart.”

“That might be true,” Rey admitted. “I could have kept it inside me for a little while longer but I don't know what I would have done if I'd had to control it indefinitely. I might be able to do something a lot smaller someday, but I'd have to at least have Ben's lightsaber I think. I don't know if it would work with a normal lightsaber.”

“I guess we should all be glad you could even do it once,” Poe replied. He turned back to Ben, sitting forward. “Our course right now is laid in for a nearby Rebel base. I'd like you not to try to find out where it is or to be in the cockpit at all. Chewie and Rey can handle the flying. When we get there we can see what ships we got on offer and which one can take you where you need to go, so be ready to let us know where that is. We should have a decent window for the trip, now that the First Order's massing in one spot for a moment. I'd also ask you not to try to leave the ship until I give you the go ahead, and not to try to communicate with anyone or receive any communications at least until you're well on your way wherever you're going.”

“Fine,” Ben said shortly.

“Force be with you, Kylo Ren,” Poe said, both his tone and eyes flat and expressionless. Ben nodded, reading the dismissal for what it was, standing and leaving back towards the forward hold. “I'm sorry, Rey,” Poe said as soon as the door closed behind him, relaxing a bit. “We can't pretend he's one of us.”

“I know,” Rey said, looking down at her feet, unable to help a twinge of pain on Ben's behalf. It would be reckless to the point of suicidal for Poe to do anything else but she wished it didn't have to be quite as stark a split between Ben and all the other people she cared about.

“The base we're headed for is on Ord Canfre; Outer Rim, so it's a bit out of our way, but still the closest decent depot we've got,” Poe said, placing a holocron on the table and tapping it so that a medium-sized planet appeared, covered in what looked like a patchy yellow sea with a few island continents spaced out on it, rotating slowly in midair. “It's got an old Republic outpost we've shaped up and that's our main stronghold right now, and I'd rather not go there with Ren on board at all but we don't have much of a choice. The good news is that I've been on comms with them and it seems we've got ourselves some recruits, so at least there's some potential reinforcements waiting for us. Plus we'll be showing up with all this bonus First Order loot, and that'll help a bit.”

“I can work with some of that while we're headed there, once Sergeant has an inventory done of everything we've picked up, and once I know kind of all the parts we've got,” Rose put in. “Maybe some magnet plating, and even boost the scanners a bit, plus I know we need some stuff for the Falcon, so if Chewie will help me with that--.”

“You're a miracle, Rose,” Poe said, smiling as he gently cut her off. “Thank you for that. Actually if you, Sergeant, and Chewie could get that started right now that'd be great.” Sergeant nodded and Chewie made a sound of agreement, and the three Rebels Poe had named stood and left out the same door Ben had disappeared through. “We've got a couple more things to talk about,” Poe said once they'd left, turning to Finn and Rey. “First of all, Finn's been recruiting.”

“An old friend of mine from the First Order,” Finn contributed in response to Rey's questioning look. “We ran into him on the scouting mission and he defected. He's here with everyone else now. He's looking forward to meeting you,” he added, something mischievous in his expression that Rey smiled at automatically.

“I'll need you to keep a close eye on him while we're in transit,” Poe told Rey. “I don't think he's up to anything but I'd like to be able to vouch for him completely by the time we get to Canfre. It's one thing to take in just anyone, but we can't rule out that the First Order might start thinking along the lines of sending a few spies our way if we make it a habit of taking defectors on. Nothing personal,” he said to Finn, who looked thoughtful. “But since we have a way to be sure we might as well be.”

“I want to figure out if we can make sure there actually will be more defectors,” Finn said. “If we could find some way to give their troopers an option for getting out--.”

“Another thing I don't want Ren to hear us talking about,” Poe said, rubbing a hand across his face. “But if you can think of something I'll give it a shot. We'd have to vet them, but it'd be worth it to get a few more soldiers on board who are already soldiers. The other thing we need to talk about is Ren himself,” he added. “I don't want to send him off on his own across the galaxy, both because I don't want him stumbling across anything he shouldn't and because I want to make sure he gets where he's going and gets out of my hair as fast as possible. I need you to play guard duty.”

“I'll do it,” Finn said, looking a little troubled by the suggestion even though he agreed easily enough. “But I hope he's not going too far.”

“Me too, but that's not the deal we made. Given how the First Order lays out their systems it can't be more than a couple weeks though. Thanks, Finn,” Poe said. Finn nodded and stood, leaving as well, so that only Poe and R2 and Rey remained. “What a nightmare,” Poe groaned, leaning back against his seat and shaking his head, looking at Rey. “I can't say your boyfriend's more trouble than he's worth, not after everything he's done, but he's sure as hell not a convenient person to have around at the moment.”

“I don't think he'll do anything, Poe,” Rey said, wishing she could give him more of an assurance than just that but certain, at least, that that was most likely true. “If he made a deal with you he's not going to go back on it.”

“That I can believe, at this point, but there's a lot in that deal that wasn't nailed down as tightly as it probably should have been.” He shook his head, frowning at the game table, one hand fiddling with his holstered blaster almost as though he wasn’t even aware he was doing it. Rey could feel that he had more to say and waited, R2 keeping watch as well, his projector lens flipping between red and blue thoughtfully. After a while Poe looked up, his eyes tight, his lips pursed as though he tasted something sour. “There's more,” he told her. “Leia's waiting for us on Canfre.”

Rey took that in, feeling herself frown as well. That was a wrinkle she hadn't anticipated. “Does she know he's with us?”

“She knows. And he'll feel her when we get there, won't he? Even confined to the ship?” Rey nodded. “Rey...” Poe sighed, looking away then back to her again. “Leia... she doesn't want to see him.”

It felt as though Rey's heart physically constricted in her chest, another flinch of pain on Ben's behalf but this one much deeper, much, much worse. “At all?” she couldn't help but ask.

“She doesn't want him anywhere near her. She was very specific about it. He's not to set foot on the planet unless it's to change ships, and even then he goes in a straight line from ramp to ramp and nowhere else. But I need your help with this.” She could only look at him, saying nothing, and after a moment he went on. “I don't know how to tell him this, or if we should tell him this, but if we get there and he decides to go see her regardless of what she wants or what he's promised to do or not do, you're the only one who has even half a shot at being able to stop him.”

“Poe...” Rey said, her heart constricting even more at what he was saying, what he was asking.

“Please, Rey. On top of everything else, if the Supreme Leader goes striding through the heart of the Rebellion I have no idea what will happen. Probably half our guys will fire on sight, and I doubt they'll really be able to hurt him but sending a hundred blaster bolts flying every which way will do no one any favors.”

“You're asking me to keep Ben from his mother.”

“I know I am,” Poe said, his expression heartrendingly sympathetic but uncompromising. “I don't have a choice. If he moves, I need to know you'll be on it.”

“But-- but what if that's the best thing that could happen?” Rey suggested, knowing she shouldn't but unable to stop herself. “What if it would be a good thing, letting Ben see his mom? What if it would change something for him?”

“Would it, Rey?” Poe asked, watching her. She bit her tongue, wanting to insist it would but knowing in her heart that whatever Ben still felt for Leia he was as closely tied to the First Order today as he ever had been. If anything had shifted in his thoughts, in his heart, she would have felt it by now; there was no way he would have been able to hide something that monumental from her while they were so close to each other. She didn't have to say it out loud; she could tell that from her silence, Poe already knew. “Rey, don't make me make it an order,” he said softly, almost begging. “I don't want to.”

“I can't do it, Poe. If he really wants to--.”

“Then make sure he doesn't want to. Tell him before we get there and find a way to change his mind before he makes it up.”

“I won't manipulate him for you.”

“Then it is an order, Rebel,” Poe said, standing, everything about him tight, gone cold in his expression, in his stance, in the Force. “Kylo Ren doesn't leave this ship when we get to the planet. If you can't guarantee that by the time we get there, I'll put every damn gun I have between him and Leia and make it a standoff that no one will win either way.” Again Rey said nothing but within her she felt something uncoil on Ben's behalf, something that at its best was a protective, defensive instinct and at its worst was a sour, deadly hatred for Poe, hatred that he would even ask, hatred that he would force her and worse-- threaten her, and Ben, and the Rebels, to make her do what he wanted. It was very nearly the same thing she'd felt when she'd attacked Luke on Ahch-To, that outraged, aggrieved vengeance that had allowed her to overcome the Jedi Master who was supposed to have been her guide and teacher, who was supposed to have been Ben's. Luke had betrayed and destroyed Ben, and Rey had lashed out. That wasn't what Poe was doing, and a distant, more reasonable part of her understood that, but she couldn't help the feeling, and for a moment as they stared each other she could swear Poe may as well be bonded to her himself, so clearly did he seem to be able to tell what she was thinking.

“I'll do it,” she said at last, the words so venomous Poe all but took a step back.

“Thank you,” he said, but she wasn't about to be mollified and looked away from him, her jaw tight with everything she wasn't letting herself say. “R2-D2 has a message for you from Leia that's for your ears only, so I'll see myself out.” He left, the door sliding shut behind him, and for a moment there was silence. Then R2 whistled inquiringly, almost tentatively, rolling over to Rey and tilting himself toward her.

“I don't hate him,” she muttered, blowing out a breath and trying to reach for her center. It was still shaken, and she couldn't reach for the bond now with Ben so close on the other end so she gave up trying altogether and just took another deep breath. “I don't hate Poe,” she repeated. “I'm just mad at him. What's the message?”

R2 seemed to consider her for a moment, as much as the droid could, but he had no further comment to make and eventually backed away far enough to angle himself toward an empty bit of floor in the center of the main hold, activating his holoprojector.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Having thirty chapters is another mental threshold for me when it comes to fanfiction, though I can’t necessarily say what it means unless maybe it’s the difference between a long fic and a short fic. Did I know this would end up being thirty chapters when I really committed to writing it? Mmm, maybe, maybe not. Am I glad we’ve made it this far? Hell yes I am :) And thanks to you for coming with me!!


	31. Rey follows orders

Rey's feelings permeated the bond after Ren left the meeting with Poe and the others, some of them feelings Ren had never expected to feel from her while she was with her Rebel friends; pain, at first, of an emotional kind, and regret or concern or both, but those were followed swiftly by outrage and then a hard, almost cruel anger that was so counter to Rey herself that it made him hesitate where he knelt in the second hold as he repacked his pack, reaching for the bond tentatively. Whatever it was that was causing those feelings she didn't want his input on it at the moment- in fact it flavored strongly of something she'd rather he pretended not to notice- so he withdrew, wondering what it could possibly be. He was distracted by Finn coming up next to him, sitting on the floor of the crammed space so close to Ren that in any other circumstance it could have read almost as deliberately crowding him.

“Looks like you're stuck with me a little longer, Solo,” Finn said. “Wherever you decide to go, I'm your escort.”

“Fine,” Ren said, feeling some sort of indecisiveness in Finn that he couldn't put a name to, something that made Finn frown into the middle distance, arms crossed against his chest. From Ren’s own perspective it might have been better if he had just gotten stuck with a couple of unknowns with blasters, rather than one of the few Rebels who might actually want to engage him in conversation at some point-- who might, Ren realized belatedly, know exactly why they were going to the specific First Order location Ren was considering, which was undoubtedly one of the reasons Poe was putting Finn on Ren in the first place.

“Anyway, I have a question for you,” Finn continued, still frowning but at least looking at Ren. “Since you've gotten used to Finn now, and all.” Ren waited, still sorting through the First Order paraphernalia as he decided what to take and what to leave behind, but Finn seemed to want a prompt of some kind so he looked up again.

“What?” he said.

“I was thinking about how the First Order does names. Or doesn't do names, I guess. And about my name, and FN-2188 getting a new name, maybe, if Rey's in the mood. And I thought I should ask you about your name.” He glanced over Ren as though appraising him, then looked away. “Anyway, if you don't want me to call you Solo anymore I won't. If it's important to you. I don't know if it is or not.”

“It's not,” Ren said shortly, going back to his packing.

“So we're good, then?”

“Call me what you want to.”

“Yeah, I kinda figured. Just thought I'd ask.” He went silent again but still seemed exactly as expectant as before. This time Ren kept his eyes on his pack, refusing to answer the cue, and eventually Finn sighed, loudly and dramatically, in a way clearly meant to make a point.

“You don't make anything easy, you know that?” he demanded, but without any real ire in his tone. “Look, I think you're probably better at the head of the First Order than Hux is. Not that the First Order isn't still a heaping helping of Bantha dung. But, you know, all told. So if you need help, like, with the whole counter-overthrow thing, I'm in.”

“And exactly how long has Poe assigned you to me?” Ren asked, raising his eyebrows at Finn, who shifted uncomfortably.

“Yeah, this might not be so much of a Poe-sanctioned thing. Strictly speaking. Directly, anyway, he's given me a bit of, you know, room to maneuver.”

Ren highly doubted Poe had given Finn that much room to maneuver but nor was it particularly his business what Rebel High Command did or didn't approve of so he just shrugged, going back to his packing. “I'm still working out how I want to do things,” he said to forestall what Finn's next question likely would be. “Don't slow me down.”

“Okay,” Finn said, seeming genuinely satisfied with that response, the indecisive feeling in him turning to resolve as he stood and moved off. It was a puzzle but one Ren didn't bother spending too much time on, instead finishing his packing and then reexamining his bag critically for the sake of having something to do. The Rebels had spread out across the ship, only a few remaining in this particular hold, but even those had already separated into what he now recognized as the rough groupings of their campfire circles, despite not having any campfires to settle around. He supposed there would be some gaps now, for the four Rebels that they'd lost, but wherever it ended up his circle would still be intact. Well, what had been his circle. He didn't know if Rose and Finn had established a spot while he and Rey had been elsewhere, or if Poe would be reclaiming residence in their group now that it seemed Ren was to be separated from things as much as possible. The Falcon didn't have a brig, so unless they planned to shove him into storage he was stuck in a wait-and-see game until further notice.

“Hi,” Rose said, huffing up next to him, a pile of miscellaneous mechanical pieces in her arms that she piled at his feet. “I need your help. You know stuff about all this, right?”

“Stuff about what?” Ren asked automatically, a little discomfited to have been approached at all.

“Well, I have parts from speeders, parts from blasters, parts from helmets, and parts from storage,” she narrated, sorting them into their categories as she went. “But some of this tech must be new First Order R&D because I haven't seen it before, unless these were special troops of some kind that get upgraded gear, but I don't think so because we haven't seen many of those in a while but so far they've had the same gear as the ones before.”

“Rose, my position in the First Order isn't really in tech,” Ren pointed out, a bit baffled.

“Well, I can pretty much figure it out myself, and with Rey's help when she comes down, and maybe also Chewie's, so for now you sort.” In response to his baffled look she pointed to the rough piles she'd just created. “Put the things with other things that look like them, Ren, because I'm still trying to get everything together and Sergeant wants to start inventory with at least a broad outline of what this stuff is and does, so if you just match I'll bring you more as I go through everyone's packs.”

Though it wasn't said in a tone of command, or even of mild query, somehow by the time Rey found him Ren was sitting cross-legged on the floor with a wide variety of bits and pieces of junk around him, carefully categorizing them by most notable feature-- a twist of wire there, an oddly shaped connector here. It was a relief to at least have something to occupy himself with, though the Rebels that had decided to bunk in that particular hold had started to look at him a little askance for how much space the job was taking up. They left him alone about it, and somehow he assumed it was more because they knew it was a Rose-assigned job than because they were worried about hurting any tender feelings of his. When Rey approached he looked up, still half-distracted, a piece of blaster in one hand and a piece of communicator in the other.

“What are you doing?” she asked, her expression oddly fierce considering the situation.

“Matching,” he said a bit helplessly, before he caught the roiling tide of her in the Force. “Rey?” he asked, frowning as he reached into the bond. She snapped at him-- actually snapped at him, physically but within the connection, and he withdrew sharply, surprised and baffled by her response.

“Come with me,” she said, and he slowly set down his tech bits and stood, following her back through the hold. They passed Poe on their way out, who was standing in the forward airlock and talking to some others; he glanced at them then glanced away just as quickly, his expression tight.

“Did something happen?” Ren asked Rey tentatively, not knowing what to say or do with only the general flush of her inexplicable wrath to guide him as she led the way through the now-empty main hold, down the hall, and took the turn leading to the cockpit. There he stopped, frowning, and she stopped as well, wheeling around to look at him expectantly.

“Come on,” she said, nodding toward where he could feel Chewie manning the pilot's chair.

“I agreed to stay out of the cockpit,” he reminded her in as neutral and non-confrontational a tone as he could manage.

“I want to show you something.”

“Show me what, Rey?”

“Where we're going,” she answered, a determined, almost malicious twist to the set of her mouth that he didn't like at all. “And where we are now. And what we're going to do when we get there.”

“Why?” was all he could think to ask, actually taking a small step backward.

“Because I don't want to hide it from you. Because I don't want to hide anything from you.”

Ren examined her, the stiff, almost aggressive way she was standing, her shoulders, tight with whatever it was she was trying to hold in, her eyes, willing him along, not in any kind or caring or Rey sort of way, but as if his doing so would validate something against someone else somehow. Something he was almost sure wasn't a good thing at all. He made a decision, reaching for the bond again, wincing as in their minds she immediately lashed out. “What are you doing?” he demanded, standing his ground.

“I don't want to hide anything from you,” she repeated, but something unraveled in her as she said it, something loosening ever so slightly.

“That's your explanation for why you're not letting me search your feelings? It already makes it seem like you are hiding something to me,” he pointed out.

“I don't want to. Ben, I-- I don't want to do this. You and me,” she added, gesturing between them with one hand, miming a downward cut as if cutting them apart. “I don't want you over there and me over here. I don't want to have to be on their side all the time if it means I have to hurt you.”

“I don't want to know, Rey,” he said, shaking his head, taking another step back. “Don't tell me anything.”

“Ben--.”

“Don't tell me anything,” he repeated firmly, pushing his certainty at her in the bond. She might not want him to feel everything she was feeling right now, but she couldn't stop him making her feel what he was feeling.

“But what if there's things I should tell you?” she asked in all but a whisper, the core of her rage fracturing, the dark, brittle thing he could sense even now.

“Don't.”

“But what if-- what if they hurt you?” she asked, the fracturing in her voice, in her face, in the tortured expression she was giving him, like he was the one falling apart in front of her and she couldn't bear it. “What if I don't tell you and then it hurts you?”

“If it's something you're not supposed to tell me, don't tell me. Rey,” he sighed, gesturing in the Force for her to come out of the hallway to the cockpit. She acknowledged the movement with a slight flinch away, refusing it. “We have to be who we are, Rey. You're your side's Force user, I'm my side's Force user. We can't pretend that that's not how it is, or that that won't hurt us sometimes. If we try to pretend we'll make it worse. You have to be a Rebel, if you're going to be a Rebel,” he added with a small smile. “I don't like it, but I know that right now that's what you are. And I'm not.”

“Ben...” she said hesitantly, coming towards him, coming back out into the main hallway. “What if I think it's something that's just wrong to do?”

He hesitated, examining her again. The dark feelings had almost fallen away, leaving behind only how upset she was, a tangle of doubt and contrition that he still wasn't sure she'd let him close to if he tried. “Is this something Poe said?” he guessed.

“He gave me a job. An order,” she ground out without really answering the question, her glare souring again. “And I don't want to.”

“Do your job, Rey,” Ben said softly, reaching out and lightly, as gently as possible, brushing a couple fingers across her temple. “Don't worry about me.” _Let me in_, he said in her mind, pushing the words at her but not trying to follow. Something about the bond felt constricted, guarded, Rey consciously setting a barrier to deny him. She frowned down at her feet but a moment later the bond relaxed, bit by reluctant bit. Whatever had changed between when he'd last seen her and now it had thrown her for a loop, even more than what she'd been feeling before. There was something so hurt in her, so lost and upset, that he couldn't account for at all. What on earth could have happened? Had Poe changed his mind about following through on his part of the deal? But no, there was no sense of betrayal here, and besides Finn had seemed to be truthful when he'd been talking about accompanying Ren going forward. Ren wasn't entirely sure how Finn felt about him these days, or vice versa, but he thought they were at least to a point where Finn wouldn't just lie to his face. And he certainly wouldn't lie well enough that Ren wouldn't be able to sense at least a degree of it.

“Rey, we don't have very long,” Ren said in the silence, reaching for her physically, starting at her shoulders and running his hands down her arms, ending up with her hands in his. “I don't know where we're going but the Falcon isn't equipped to support this many people for an extended trip, so we're going to be together for a few days at best. After that...” he let his voice trail off, not saying anything but instead switching to the bond, showing her the regret he was feeling already knowing they were going to be separated again. “I don't want to waste any time,” he said again.

“Then I need you to promise something,” she told him, still looking down at her feet, each word strained and raw like she'd had to drag it out of herself.

“Do it,” he all but ordered himself. “Say it.”

“You have to keep your promise to Poe. When we get to- to the planet- you have to stay on the ship.” She looked up at him and he was unsettled to see tears in her eyes, suddenly and terribly reminded of that day on the Supremacy, the last time he'd made her cry, when she'd left him even after everything they'd accomplished together. It was a horrible, horrible memory, and he knew she felt the sensation of it in the bond, and it made the tears fall, which only made the whole thing worse. “You have to stay on the ship no matter what,” she whispered.

That would have been ominous any other time but right now he almost didn't care, so badly did he want to just do or say whatever would wipe that look off her face. “I promise, Rey,” he said, pulling her arms around his waist then bringing his hands to her face, wiping the tears away. It was no use; more took their place right away. “Anything, Rey.”

“I'm so sorry,” she said, her voice cracking, her shoulders shaking with what was unmistakably the beginning of a sob. He pulled her into him, not knowing what else to do as she apologized, both in real life and in the bond. What could have possibly brought this on? What had Poe asked her to do, or ordered her to do, that could rip her up so quickly, so thoroughly? Ren felt something sour inside himself, something go cold and dark as he considered the broad possibilities, all the ways Poe could use Rey to hurt him, or to make him do one thing or another; he'd thought the Rebel General was above that somehow but this was proof positive he clearly was not. And to think, he'd almost liked Poe, but no one who made Rey cry like this deserved anything more than the darkest circle of hell.

“You've made me cry like this before,” Rey said with a shaky smile into his chest, reading the general progression of his thoughts.

“Don't say it,” Ren replied immediately. “Don't say that, Rey. Not even as a joke.”

“I trust you, Ben,” she said, leaning back to look at him, face still damp, lips still trembling, but seeming as though the worst of it was probably over. “It's just going to be harder for-- for others. But I trust you. You know that right?”

“Yes,” he agreed, brushing his fingers across her cheek again. Anything. Anything to make the tears stop falling, to make her smile again.

“We'll get there,” she mumbled, sniffing heavily as she looked at his chest, collecting herself. “We'll make them see. It'll just be hard, but that's okay. You've got me,” she added, looking up at him.

He did. He did have her. And that miracle, that surreal, precious, insanely complicated but ultimately indispensable miracle, that was the only thing in this galaxy or any other that mattered. “Smile, Rey,” he insisted gently. “Just a little.” She tried, looked down, took a shaky breath, then tried again. The second time she managed it, her feelings in the bond settling for the moment. He drew her to him, brushing his lips across her forehead. Only a few days. He wanted to spend it seeing her smile as often as possible.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: it’s interesting developing Rey and Ren as a couple, especially in non-crisis moments; well, moments involving a somewhat less urgent crisis than others. The problem with so many narratives being about will-they-won’t-they is that when they finally do you have no time to show that, and I want to show some of it at least :)


	32. Rey’s imbalance

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Alternate title for this chapter could very well have been: Characters approaching the point

Ben had been a little lost since he and Rey had boarded the Falcon, and she knew she wasn't helping anything. She tried not to let what was about to happen distract her, tried to focus on the immediate moment and on being with him like he'd asked her to, but the undercurrent of her true feelings was still there and every so often she could see him glancing at her speculatively, wondering, concerned but not reaching for it, not trying to tease out exactly what was wrong. His trust made it worse somehow, his willingness to go along with whatever, assuming the Rebels would play him straight. They would and wouldn't, and the closer Canfre got the more she couldn't keep her emotions in check. At night she'd leave him sleeping on the floor of the third hold where their circle had ended up- Finn, Rose, Ben, and herself- and would pace the hallways or sit in the cockpit for hour after hour, going through the data on the computers, reading anything that caught her attention and giving Chewie a few hour's relief. He didn't really need it, since they were at lightspeed the whole time and R2 was more than capable of keeping an eye on things well enough, but it gave her some room to think on her own.

In the meantime the Rebels were experiencing something rather novel: getting bored. Three Rebels had blaster injuries and had been given the double bed in the crew quarters to recover while the rest took stock of their supplies, signed up for a slot in the refresher so they could shower, then had drinks in the main hold or a turn on the game table, which was certainly being used to the fullest. Rey tried to use the empty hours to take Ben aside as often as she could, making the most of their time, and he taught her Force exercises and told her some of the Force lore he'd learned. They'd unofficially commandeered the Falcon's auxiliary ship, partially because it was the only empty space available and partially because it was the only portion of the Falcon Ben had never seen before so it was an easier place for him to spend his time, though neither of them said it out loud. The Falcon's original auxiliary ship had been lost long before he was even born, and where the Rebels had managed to find a replacement no one knew, but Rey was secretly grateful to whoever had accomplished the feat. He certainly felt easier there, less tense, less uncomfortable, away from both the main ship and all the Rebels on it. They meditated in the auxiliary as well, Rey still trying to clear up the unsteadiness she was feeling, but the core of it persisted, which worried her.

“HOW can I be so unsteady and still do all this stuff?” she demanded after a particularly frustrating hour in which she had tried and failed to calm her connection to the Force. “I communicated with the plants, I fried all those First Order soldiers, I felt the earthquake coming--.”

“Wasn't an earthquake,” Ben reminded her for at least the sixth time.

“Everyone's going to keep calling it an earthquake, Ben, you might as well get used to it,” she said, drawing her knees up to her chest and wrapping her arms around them, trying to let go of her moodiness and not doing the best possible job of it. “It's easier to say than 'made the trees go nuts', and makes a lot more sense to most people.” Ben rolled his eyes expressively, drawing a reluctant smile out of her, a smile that faded as she considered her current predicament.

“Do you think there's something wrong with me?” she asked at long last, frowning at her arm wraps, the closest thing to frown at in her immediate range of view. Ben frowned too, and in the bond she could feel how reluctant he was to even consider the problem.

“I don't think it's as simple as something being wrong with you,” he said slowly. “But you were injured, and then you exhausted yourself into unconsciousness right after. You may need to recover in some way we haven't realized yet.”

“Ben,” Rey said, looking at him where he still sat in a meditative pose, “what happened that day?”

“I don't know.”

“But when I-- when I passed out, I guess, you said I disappeared from you.”

“Yes.”

“Why? How?”

“Rey, if I knew I'd tell you,” he assured her, his feeling in the bond shadowed with a reluctance that hadn't been there a moment before. “It was a terrible feeling that I'd rather not feel again, but beyond that there's nothing much to say.”

“Can you show me?” she asked, scooting closer towards him, reaching out a hand.

“I could,” he said, taking the hand she offered, folding his fingers around hers, “but I don't know what it would be like to experience that. To experience yourself going cold in that way, from the perspective of someone else. But I will show you if you want me to.”

She opened her mouth to say that she did- that she wanted to see whatever she could, if it might help- but expression made her hesitate, looking at her hand in his, his eyes and mouth tight, tense, but his grip loose and gentle. He didn't want to relive it himself- really, really didn't want to relive it- and she was about to make him, and with no guarantee it would contribute anything to fixing the problem. “Maybe just tell me,” she relented, and he relaxed.

“At first it was though you had gone completely,” he explained in a quiet, reflective voice. “There wasn't anything there except me; it was like it was before you.” She nodded, mentally turning that phrase over in her mind- 'before you'- but he continued without noticing. “Then there was a gap, maybe, an absence. Like the feeling of something being gone, but it was just a hole. Nothing came from it, and when I tried to send you feelings or words through it they just... fell away,” he said, lifting his other hand and narrating with a motion like drifting off, then sinking. “That was what you felt like when I found you. It was the only feeling coming from you, was that lack of something, and I had to be right on top of you to feel it. It was the only feeling that came from you for a while.”

“But what could that be?” Rey asked, frowning. “What could that mean?”

“I don't know. You came afterwards, like sound coming from a long way off that got closer and closer.”

“Like I was coming back?” she clarified.

He pursed his lips a moment, his gaze turning inward, studying something within himself. “Poe asked me if you had died. He insisted that if the Force is our connection to life itself, then if that connection was cut off that must mean you'd died. I don't know what to think about it.”

“But it's-- it's possible?” Rey asked, feeling her breath catch in her throat around the words.

“I don't know. There are legends, but I'd dismissed them. Fantasies and fairy tales. But after what you did, and how it should have effected you...” he trailed off, frowning himself. “I don't know how it makes sense unless you did die.”

“But then how did I come back?” she pressed, wishing now that she had made him show her what had happened, if only to know if there was anything he was hiding from her. But no, his feeling in the Force was clear and guileless, if confused, and had been throughout.

“You can't have, that's the problem. You certainly couldn't have without me feeling it; and without meaning to? Impossible. The Force has a will, I believe, but it responds to the will of Force beings most of all. To how we choose to wield it. That it would move on its own to save someone might very, very theoretically happen, and even then, I would have felt that, too. It's an impossible question, Rey,” Ben said, looking back up at her, the hand holding hers stroking a thumb along her palm in a soothing way.

Rey frowned, trying to think about this rationally, but could feel the undercurrent of fear in herself. If she had died- it seemed impossible, it seemed deliriously ludicrous, but if- what now? Nevermind how it had happened, or why, or who had done or not done something, but what did that mean for her in the present moment? “Do you think that- that,” she said slowly, sounding out the words as if tasting them. “Do you think that dying, if that's what happened, is what unbalanced me?”

He shrugged. “We know that something did. It's as likely to be that as anything else.”

“But then how do I fix it?” she protested. “How can I recover from something that might not even have happened? What about the other stories?” she pressed. “The others who came back?”

“If anything like that ever did happen, any reliable details are lost to time,” Ben said. “I will look for them again, when I return to the First Order and can access their library, but I wouldn't look to that source for guidance. You might just have to feel it, Rey,” he said, looking at their joined hands where his thumb was still stroking her palm. “You might have to work it out as you go, and allow the Force to guide you. It typically will show you a way to become whole, if you can be patient long enough.”

“I'm not feeling very patient, Ben,” Rey muttered.

“It's never been your strongest attribute,” he agreed, smiling at their hands. She watched him for a moment, trying to decide what to ask next, if there was a point to asking anything next. Not only had they not cleared anything up- in fact she felt more confused now than she had before- but she was distracted by his hand on hers, by this close, private space they currently shared, by the way his hair curled slightly against his neck and the slight twist of his mouth when he was thinking.

“Rey,” Ben said softly, and she realized that once again he was able to sense the general theme of her somewhat less than innocent thoughts. Her first instinct was mortification, but then she hesitated. Why should she feel embarrassed? There was no one but them here, and it wasn't as though she was thinking about something that he wouldn't like too. Was it?

“I am not going to do anything with you on my father's ship,” Ben replied, despite her having said nothing out loud.

“Not anything?” she asked, trying to make the question sound a little less plaintive than it felt. She wasn't very successful. Ben smiled reluctantly, and in the Force something about him brightened. Rey leaned in, slowly, paying attention to him in the bond as well as him here in front of her, but felt nothing to discourage her. If anything he was coming awake to her, some deep and instinctive part of him turning towards her, like a creature considering her in a way that made her own anticipation rise. She ducked her head to reach him and brushed her lips across his, very gently- then again- then pressed them there, harder, more insistent, as he let go of her hand and pulled her into him with both arms.

It was heaven. It was nothing like when they'd boarded ship, the last time they'd really done much of anything, because that had been need and relief and exhaustion and reunion. But this was like addressing an identical desire both in themselves and in each other, like exploring this feeling, testing it, how it waxed, how it waned. And all it seemed to do at the moment was wax, so much so that Rey, who had only intended to kiss him a little and no more, found herself climbing on top of him, her legs on either side of his hips, her hands in his hair. Not that he was complaining, turning her in his arms so that she ended up on the floor beneath him, one of his arms wrapped around her back, the other propping him up so he could continue kissing her, harder, so hard she almost wondered if she was going to bruise, his lips demanding, his tongue in her mouth. The arm under her slid away and his hand went to her hip, pinning her there as he pulled back.

“Rey,” he rasped, his eyes so dark with desire that his look alone made her thrill to him, made her wrap her fingers more tightly into his hair and try to pull him back to her. He was about to obey- she could feel him in the bond, already anticipating another kiss as he tilted his head toward her- but then leaned back again, his gaze turning inward.

“Ben?” she asked, just as she felt what he was already feeling, the ship slowing down, coming out of lightspeed. And then, the next moment, the distant but definite feeling of life, of a planet being approached. They were here.

“We've run out of time already,” Ben muttered, dipping back towards her, pressing his mouth back to hers, but Rey had gone tense beneath him, realizing what this meant. How fast was their approach? How long would it take to get close enough to pick out individual people? How quickly would Ben notice after that?

“Rey?” Ben asked, pressing a kiss to her neck, behind her ear then to the join between neck and shoulder, feeling her reaction but with no way to know what it meant.

“Ben- we should- we shouldn't,” she said, pulling her hands out of his hair and putting them on his shoulders. “We need to stop.”

He sighed but did as she asked, pressing his forehead against her shoulder instead. “Why?” he asked. Rey hesitated in the middle of pushing him away. Maybe they shouldn't stop after all. Maybe she should be pulling him in instead, maybe she could distract him, or at least explain, at least try and prepare him like she really should have been doing this whole time. She hadn't known how- hadn't wanted to, if she was going to be ruthlessly honest with herself- but now that there was no time left to decide she was still hesitating.

“Rey?” Ben repeated, pushing himself up over her, propping himself up with both arms so he could see her. She wrapped her arms around his shoulders, keeping him from going too far as she could feel the planet coming closer and closer. Chewie wasn't taking his time with his landing-- she needed to tell him now.

“Ben--,” she started, but he'd taken her gesture as a welcome and had kissed her again, lips fused to hers as he wrapped both arms around her as well, gathering her up against him, and she hesitated, again, letting him kiss her, letting it go one more moment, but it was a moment too long.

This time she felt it the same time he did, his lips going still against her abruptly as the Force sense within him turned, reaching out as he backed away, his face stiff with shock. She kept her arms around his shoulders but he hardly seemed to notice, trapped in his terrible realization.

“Leia?” he breathed, as the Millennium Falcon began its final descent, turning his head that way as though he could see, right through the ship, right to wherever she was. They were out of time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Frankly the Ren/Leia reunion would be angsty at the best of times-- and Ren rarely is so fortunate as to experience the best of times
> 
> My tumblr:
> 
> https://how-do-i-turn-this-thing-off.tumblr.com/


	33. On Ord Canfre, Ben realizes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A series of terrible revelations and his reaction

“Ben,” Rey said under him, something in her tone that Ren imagined he should have been paying attention to, but it was all he could do to freeze in place, reaching out. His mother was here. He should have known- hadn't even considered, but should have guessed- if this was a major Rebel base, if there were as few Rebels as he suspected to begin with, if Leia was still their leader--.

“Ben,” Rey repeated as he tried to get to his feet, tangled in her. No, not just her arms and legs, as he'd thought, but in the Force, her trying to hold him here, trying to weigh him down. He looked back at her, confused, and saw in her face and in the bond another thing he should have known.

“You were told about this,” he said, trying to make sense of that, trying to get away. Her grip was like iron but she was still shaken and he was still stronger than her; he used a Force push, a hard one, against the floor, sending him backwards to his feet and breaking her grip as he stared at her. He should have known. The accusation pounded through him, like hurt, like fury, like the agony of surprise, an unpleasant surprise from something he thought could no longer damage him; an accusation that strangely seemed to echo in Hux's voice. And he wasn't sure now, standing here, if what hurt was his mother or her, the desert girl, the scavenger, the matching piece of him who was still on the ground staring up as though she was the one in agony.

“This was it,” he realized out loud, the pieces falling together to form a terrible thought, and several other terrible thoughts that he didn't want to look at, didn't want to see. “This is what- the thing you wanted to say, the thing you thought- you said that it would hurt me, this is--.”

“Ben--,” Rey said in a pleading tone, starting to get up, but he was well past her pleading now.

“You said- it was orders, that- Poe, and he--,” Ren continued, looking past her now, into his own thoughts, his memories, the agony of her and how she'd looked then, almost the same as how she looked now. “Poe told you to do this. Poe knew and told you to hide this.”

“Ben, you said not to tell you,” Rey pleaded, now on her feet. “I wanted to, and you said I couldn't. You said we had to be who we are. That I had to be a Rebel, and that I couldn't tell you.”

He had. He had said something like that, or at least something that had turned out to mean that, even though he didn't know it at the time. He had told her, and she had been trying so, so hard to warn him, with tears in her eyes, then tears on his shirt. He'd held her and he'd said what he had to to convince her that it would be alright, that he would be alright. But he hadn't known. He'd just been saying the words.

“Ben?” Rey asked, edging, not towards him, but away. He looked at her again, properly looked at her, and saw with terrible, searing clarity how the single step she'd taken lined her up with the door leading back into the Falcon.

“No,” he said, almost to himself, denying it. She had moved in the Force as well, as if to be ready for him, as if to keep him here. “What were Poe's orders?” he murmured, staying where he was, wrenching the words out of himself. “What were Poe's orders, exactly?”

“To stop you,” she confirmed in a whisper, her face screwed up as though to cry again. “If you wanted- if you tried- to convince you to do what you said, and stay on the ship.”

To convince you. To convince you. The words rang in his head, reminding him, the last piece of the puzzle clicking into place. Poe had sent her to make him agree again to do as he was told, and she'd done a damn good job of it, standing outside the cockpit that day like an open wound, an open wound only a promise from him could shut. And Poe had also sent Rey to enforce it just in case, even after all that, he changed his mind.

Ren turned away, physically, both for the benefit of not having to look at Rey right now and to concentrate all his focus on what was happening outside the ship. Somewhere in the middle of all this they'd touched down, the Falcon settling onto its landing gear, and he could feel the Rebels inside massing at the unloading ramp, and other Rebels massing outside, more than he would expect, Rebels whose nerves were clear to him now-- their nerves and the unusual amount of weapons they carried. Poe didn't think Rey would be able to stop him, or maybe wasn't sure Rey was going to try. Ren turned back around, studying her both physically and in the Force, and wasn't sure either.

“Tell me,” he commanded, his tone hard and uncompromising.

“Ben--.”

“Tell me all of it, Rey, right now.”

She visibly steeled herself, but couldn't stop her lower lip from trembling. “Leia doesn't want to see you. Poe has his orders. I would never- I don't want to--.” She stopped, taking a deep breath, setting her feet. “Please don't make me do this.”

So. She'd chosen her side, just as he'd told her to. She'd kept her mouth shut and had kept so much of herself in the bond closed to him, all this time, just as he'd told her to. And now his mother was on that planet and Rey was gathering the Force to her as though Ren might attack, which part of him was contemplating doing. Well, not the attack itself; she'd forgotten they were on the auxiliary ship, a much flimsier device than the Falcon in every way. He could activate his lightsaber and cut his way out, if he really needed to. If he wanted to. Right into a nest of Rebels, maybe enough to make a difference, maybe not.

But why? To get to Leia, and then what? Leia, who didn't want to see him. Leia, who had told Poe to keep him away, so insistently Poe had used Rey like this. Leia, who right now was somewhere nearby as the Rebels waited to see what he would do, and her feeling in the bond-- he turned away, but not quickly enough, sensing more than he would have wished to. She was prepared to flee. She was prepared to make good her escape if Ren came near her. And that was all he needed to know.

“Is that everything?” Ren asked, his tone remarkably restrained, considering. Rey hesitated and it went right through something in him, decisively enough that he immediately raised his hand. “No. Stop,” he said as she started to speak, started, he was terribly and utterly sure, to lie to him. “That's enough. We're not-- we're not doing this.” He looked away, fighting it down, all the feelings inside him, boxing them up, locking them away. He was among his enemies, and they treated him like an enemy. The only absurdity in this whole charade was his reaction. Of course the Rebel leader did not welcome the First Order Supreme Leader. Any being with even an ounce of sense would have known how all of this would play out clearly and obviously, well before it had happened. Any being, it seemed, except for him. “Tell Poe in future to conduct his business with me directly,” he said, looking back at her and straining to keep his tone even, to keep it devoid of emotion. “We have an understanding already regarding my time at this facility; if there are additional circumstances he wishes to review beforehand, it is not as though he doesn't know where to find me.”

“I don't think he wanted to, Ben,” Rey whispered, watching him. “I don't think he liked it either.”

“That is neither here nor there,” Ren said, stepping toward her. She went tense again, holding her ground. He stopped, making her meet his eyes, which she seemed to be trying not to do. “I'm going into the ship, Rey. I am tired and would like to sleep, and now that the Falcon will be empty of Rebels I should be able to sleep in a bed for once.”

“Promise?” she asked, her voice small and unsure.

“We have already had that conversation,” he replied, flatly, expressionlessly. “How many more times do you require me to be 'convinced'?” She flinched at that, in the bond as well, but he was still too far beyond caring to respond, brushing past her and through the airlock before she could make up her mind to try and stop him.

The ship was as empty as he'd hoped it would be, the Rebels leaving with every scrap they'd brought with them, only a few used cups still scattered around the main hold to show they'd been there at all. He continued to the crew quarters, to what he still thought of as his parent's room, hesitating only for a moment on the threshold before proceeding inside. Why he was still allowing such sentimentality was anyone's guess; certainly no one else cared. Rey hadn't come after him and he closed the door behind him and locked it, engaging the mechanism with a twist of the Force since he didn't know the code required for the job, then standing alone in the empty room for a moment. Had he hoped Rey would try to follow, try to come in, try to speak to him? Maybe, he decided, but that was unwise and reckless. He knew now that she was not the true source of what had hurt him, merely the thing that had been in front of him the moment the wound had been incurred. To know where the hurt had originally come from he had only to look within himself.

Ren turned to survey the room, the familiarity, the silence. How long since he had spent a moment alone? Not since he'd waited behind after speaking to Poe in the forest; every moment after that he'd been in the company of one Rebel or another. It was strange that it hadn't occurred to him until now to mind but then, clearly quite a few things hadn't occurred to him until now.

He was not tired but he lay on the bed. He did not think he would be able to sleep, but he closed his eyes. He could meditate at least. If he could not find any peace in his own thoughts, he could retreat into the Force and find at least some meaning and some relief there. The silence in the room helped; being on his own helped. The Force promised at least a certain type of oblivion if he could quiet his mind enough to reach it.

_Ben_. His eyes opened of their own accord, staring at the ceiling as her voice sounded in his mind. He didn't respond. He couldn't. What could he say? There seemed too much and too little, all at once. Rey said nothing else either but now she'd turned his attention toward the bond and he was trapped in it, like an insect in ointment. Her uncertainty. Her hurt. Her regret. Her pain. Ren sat up on the edge of the bed, crushing his hands into fists against his legs. HER pain?! He bit back his feelings at that, grinding them down, forcing them away. It didn't matter. He knew it didn't, and he would make himself feel it. He would make himself feel it as long as it took. But still she lingered on the edge of his senses, waiting, as if he would respond. He wouldn't. She could wait as long as she liked but he could control his own voice, at least, even in his thoughts, and he had nothing to say to her or anyone, at least not until he could bury all of this and be himself again.

It took a long, tense moment of making himself breathe, making himself come back to his center, but he did it. It took longer to make himself lie down again, but he did it. And this time when he closed his eyes he made sure his condemnation would be clear to her. He was going to sleep, as he'd said he would. He was staying right here, as they all wanted him to so badly they could concoct all sorts of hushed, secret schemes about it. Ren made sure she felt that, too; this is what she wanted. This is what she wanted.

Eventually he sensed her moving again, nearly breaking his focus as he felt her wander towards him. There was no welcome for her here even if she did try it, even if she came down the hall to the crew quarters, even if she banged on the door, or shouted for him, or attempted to use the Force to open it-- whatever extreme she went to, none of it would do her any good. And slowly, so slowly he almost couldn't believe it, she moved again, but this time away. Out of the ship. Into the base. She did what he wanted and left him alone. The Falcon was empty. He kept his eyes closed, reaching for the Force, breathing, his focus within himself so there would be no intrusions, no sensing other people or their feelings, no discovering anything he wasn't supposed to ahead of time, or at all.

He was alone, exactly as he'd wanted. And after a long, long, long time, sleep finally came to grant him relief.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Original tumblr A/N: Ren in emotional distress is very interesting to write, especially since we’ve so rarely gotten to see it on the screen. It does make it a little bit of a challenge, but one I enjoyed tackling. Too bad he and Rey couldn’t finish their ~previous scene, though ;)
> 
> My tumblr:
> 
> https://how-do-i-turn-this-thing-off.tumblr.com/


	34. Ben, alone on the Falcon

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ren has a series of visitors while spending time on the Falcon

The Falcon was a quiet place without anyone else aboard. Ren suspected only total isolation could make it feel large and empty; a feat he wouldn't have thought could be achieved even then, but here he was. Chewie came aboard a few times, mostly for maintenance reasons, and Ren stayed out of his way. R2-D2 also came aboard but that Ren didn't mind, and he spent some time talking to the droid. It was interesting that the droid, of all things, was the kindest, most understanding being to talk to. R2 told him stories from his extremely eventful life, and it didn't take long for Ren to realize that the little droid probably had one of the most complete databases of Force beings from the last few decades in this galaxy or any other, if not the most complete bar none. He quizzed R2 about anything he could think of to do with Force healing or Force exhaustion, but the droid wasn't very good with direct questions and tended to wander in his answers. Ren tried not to get frustrated, patiently listening through long reminiscences of people he'd never heard of doing things in places he'd never been to, stories that told him little of interest. In the end R2-D2 was a very elderly unit, and it was only to be expected.

Rey did not come. They were on whatever planet they'd gone to for one full day, then another, then another, and as far as he could tell Rey stayed far away from him. Not that he was trying to tell. Not that he was waiting for her. Not that he was sitting up in bed late at night, his usual meditation pose doing him absolutely no good as he reached for her, knowing he shouldn't, unable to help himself. She was still guarding herself staunchly against him- if anything she was more guarded now than ever- and each time he withdrew a little more hurt, and frustrated, and determined to pretend indifference, than he had the time before. Leia remained much the same as she had been when he arrived; ready to flee at any time if he tried to come near her.

He did not drink as a general rule, but the main hold had a bar and there was a point at which even Gatalentan tea could do nothing to help him. So on the fourth night he went down to the game table with his holocron, poured himself a glass of Skyhopper, and sipped it as slowly as he possibly could while he reviewed system after system, trying to think through his plan of what he was going to do when he finally got off this planet. Hux was difficult to predict in that Ren was almost certain he must have some kind of plan he was following- if nothing else he must have some dearly held fantasies to act out- and Ren had to try and imagine countering things he could not be sure would happen. He was studying a certain First Order base and the officers that had been in charge there at the time he'd left, wondering if they'd be worth approaching, when the forward door slid open and Poe came in.

“Ren,” he said, stopping next to the table.

“General,” Ren replied, not looking up. He'd been able to feel Poe approaching from quite a long way off, which wasn't much of a feat considering how few people came near the Falcon these days, and had considered returning to his room but there hadn't seemed much point in avoiding him.

“What're you having?”

“Skyhopper.”

“Hm. Think I'll pour myself something too, if you don't mind.”

Ren shrugged, gesturing toward the bar in a sweeping wave something along the lines of 'not my ship, not my problem'. Poe headed that way and soon enough was sliding into the seat across from Ren's with a Jet Juice in hand. Ren glanced up and away again, resisting rolling his eyes. Of course. The traditional drink of hotshot fighter pilots everywhere.

“Getting a plan together?” Poe asked, nodding to the holocron.

“Hays Major, in the Otomok system,” Ren said, switching to that set of planets. “That's where I'd like to go.”

“Bit out of the way. Major production plant, isn't it?”

“Yes. One Hux doesn't care about, since it only produces basic ores and a solid amount duracrete instead of something he can use to make super weapons with. It's also a training facility, however, and that will be useful.”

“You got friends there?”

“No. I have officers and soldiers there,” Ren said pointedly. Friends. As if the Rebels expected that he, too, would plan to win the day with personal sentiment alone.

“Sounds about right,” Poe said, leaning back and fixing Ren with an expression he couldn't quite place There was still quite a bit left of his drink, and Ren suddenly had reason to hope that Poe didn't plan to stay long. He was right to be worried. 

“Rey's pretty cut up,” Poe said bluntly. Ren had nothing to say to that, so he continued. “She thinks you don't want to see her.”

“Rey knows how I feel.”

“Yeah, well you might want to make it a little clearer. We won't be here much longer-- or at least, you and her won't. At this rate she might even end up shipping out just ahead of you.”

“When?” Ren asked before he even knew he meant to speak.

“Couple days on,” Poe said vaguely. Deliberately vaguely, Ren could feel in the Force, as if to goad him further to take action on the issue. “And there's no way to know how long she's going to be out. Could take a while. Not that it matters either way, I guess, with you back with the First Order by then.”

“Rey knows where I am,” Ren said, standing despite there still being a bit left in his own drink. “I have work to do.”

“Shitty of you to punish her though,” Poe said, not moving, just watching him with a disconcertingly perceptive gaze. “It's not her fault what Leia chooses to do. And the order came down through me, so she's punishing me, too. But if there's anyone in this mess who just got caught in the middle of the wrong people, it's Rey.”

“And it looks like she's going to continue spending her time with those same 'wrong people' for the foreseeable future.”

“Yeah, it does, so wouldn't you rather see her before you go? Or before she goes?” Ren didn't reply, turning away and leaving out the other door, back to his room, holocron in hand even though he knew already how unlikely it was that he would actually be able to get anything done. He was right, too. Even once Poe left- which took quite a long time, despite Ren's absence, long enough that Ren found himself reluctantly wondering if the Rebel General didn't mind a moment alone himself- but even then, Ren still couldn't bring himself to focus on anything. If Rey was leaving before him their time was, once again, severely limited, but what could he do about it? He'd reached for her in the bond night after night, despite not wanting to, despite wishing he could resist it, and night after night been sharply turned back. He couldn't leave the ship and unless the Force decided to connect them spontaneously he couldn't talk to Rey through that medium either if she didn't also want to. What did Poe expect him to do, hotwire his way into Rebel comms through the Falcon and start shouting for her until she had to respond? Not only was he uninterested in publicly demeaning himself to that extent, it didn't seem likely the Rebels themselves would react well to hearing the First Order Supreme Leader suddenly start broadcasting on their frequencies.

Night fell. Ren tried to meditate, again, and was only partially successful at it but managed at least a little more progress than the night before. Feeling how steady his own connection to the Force remained he wondered again what had happened to Rey to throw her off so far. Some kind of injury? A wound in the Force? He hoped she had asked Leia about it-- surely she had. Leia had also done quite a bit of study in Force lore and was more proficient than most ever noticed, so she might at least be able to offer Rey some basic guidance. As it always did his attention turned to the bond, seeking her, and what he found drew him up short. Rey was close, much closer than they had been since the Falcon had landed, but her feelings did not seem to indicate she was coming to him. In fact there was a distinct flavor of panic saturating her in the bond, and when he reached for Leia he found much the same. And there was another feeling, a distinctive other, something nebulous and near, that he caught wind of while reaching for the other two and examined curiously. It was a being of some kind, a being that, unless he was much mistaken, was making a direct line for the Falcon.

It got him up out of bed and dressed almost as though he was being compelled to it, pacing through the Falcon's halls and holds as the being came nearer. There was something about it, some kind of interference, as if he was only seeing it in the Force through some kind of static disruption, but it didn't feel like any of the other Rebels he'd met. He left the lights dimmed as he lowered the ramp, staying within the ship but looking out into the visible area the lights provided. He could sense that the being had come close- quite close actually- and he put a hand to the Falcon's wall for support as he turned his focus inward to his own connection to the living Force, concentrating on it, trying to strip the being of whatever interference was hiding it from his sight. Even as he did so the tall grasses before him rustled, then parted, and a little boy came into view.

He was humanoid but not human, the dirt and dust smeared liberally across his skin disguising it's color for a moment as the boy stopped at the very edge of the circle of light, catching sight of Ren. The grasses rustled and parted again and a creature stepped out next to him, an akk dog pup, a four-legged, Force sensitive, reptilian creature Ren had only heard of but never seen before. Its orange plate armor scales were almost impervious to lightsaber blows and had been a large part of Hux's inspiration for the Praetorian armor, though judging from the Red Battle Ren and Rey had had with those guards it seemed there was a great deal of room for improvement in that design. The akk pup's eyes were large and semi-luminous, like the night sky, and from its size and its very stubby bone spikes in the center of it's forehead and along the bone crests above its eyes it didn't seem very old, but it followed the boy in a guarding sort of way. When it saw Ren it stopped and lowered its head aggressively, splaying its feet as if to brace as it scented him. The boy didn't seem to notice or care about the pup's reaction, edging forward into the light, revealing himself to have dark eyes, black hair, and green skin so light as to be very faintly yellow.

There was something... something about the child Ren couldn't decipher, something in his senses that was being disguised from him. Ren watched him come closer without moving, reaching forward instead in the Force. The interference he'd sensed before seemed to hover between them but at this range he was able to reach through it just as the boy got to the bottom of the ramp, eyes fixed on Ren unblinkingly. What Ren found surprised him so much he almost physically jumped-- in the Force, the boy was reaching back.

“Ammu!” someone shouted, and both the boy and Ren turned as Rey came dashing into sight, her hair wild, her breathing labored. The sight of Ammu and Ren with only the ramp between them seemed to spur her on and she charged through the grass, a tremor of fear going through her in the bond. “You were supposed to be watching him!” she snapped at the pup as she went, who shook its head at her, making a reedy whining sound that Ren realized was a type of Force speech, seeming to complain that nothing had happened and the child was fine. Rey was far from convinced; she reached Ammu and crouched next to him, taking him by both shoulders and physically turning him towards her. “You know not to run off, where have you been?! How did you get through the gas clouds?”

“Rey,” Ren said, wanting again to step forward, knowing he shouldn't. Except for that first glance she hadn't looked at him once.

“Ammu,” someone else said, and he looked up and felt a new shock go through him. Leia stood at the edge of the grasses, stately in long robes with her hair pulled back, older than he remembered, shorter than he remembered, but real and here. She wasn't looking at him either but at the boy, gesturing. “Come here.” The child hesitated but obeyed, turning away from the Falcon with his head down, his steps dragging. The akk pup fell in beside him and he put a hand out, brushing the back of it against the pup's scales, as though to remind himself it was there. “You know better. Come.” Leia turned away, taking Ammu by the hand, but Ammu looked back, straight at Ren, his eyes shadowed with confusion that Ren found he himself shared, though it was a far second or even third to the other kinds of confusion he was feeling. Rey followed them, stepping behind Ammu so that he disappeared from Ren's sight, and just by looking at her Ren could tell it had been on purpose.

He waited, watching. Leia, the boy, and his pup continued on until they'd disappeared from his sight into the murky darkness but Rey turned back just before that, making her way to the Falcon oddly looking just like Ammu, her head down, her steps dragging. If she'd had an akk dog next to her they would have been all but identical. She reached the ramp and hesitated, looking up. Ren stared at her, not sure how to feel. Finally he spoke.

“That child is strong in the Force,” he said, partly an accusation, partly a verbal expression of his bewilderment.

“That child,” Rey replied, “is Leia's apprentice.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: My first ACTUAL OC in this fic, very exciting! Also glad I can include akk dogs, I’ve been hoping it would fit in this scene and it totally did
> 
> My tumblr:
> 
> https://how-do-i-turn-this-thing-off.tumblr.com/


	35. Rey and Ben, together

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rey finally comes back to the Falcon to see Ben

Rey couldn't stand how Ben was looking at her, how he felt in the Force, standing at the top of the ramp as though he'd been there from the moment she'd left, waiting for her to return. She knew, of course, that he hadn't- Chewie and Poe and R2 had all said as much- but it felt as though he had, and as though she'd left him to wait.

“Leia's apprentice,” he repeated, as though testing the words out, as though the language she'd used was foreign to him.

“Ben...” she said, edging up the ramp towards him. “Poe said you're getting ready to leave.”

“He said the same about you.”

“I am,” she confirmed, stopping just short of him, still slightly below him as she crossed her arms against her chest to ward off the light breeze. “We'll be gone for a while.”

“I won't be coming back.”

Rey nodded. She'd known that but she nodded anyway for something to do as she tried to digest it being said so bluntly, so accusingly. “Do you have to go?” she asked. It was a stupid question that she regretted instantly, and something about his eyes shaded even darker than before.

“Tell me about that child,” he said.

“I can't. You weren't supposed to know about him at all; Leia and I have kept him on top of one of the mountains, above the gas clouds, so he wouldn't be able to come down here and risk you sensing him. I don't know how he managed it without passing out. All the rest of us have had to wear gas masks.” She shifted slightly, not knowing what to say, unable to remember ever having been quite this uncomfortable in his presence before. “So, you have a plan?” she asked after a long while.

“Rey,” he said, just that, her name, watching her. She hesitated, both physically and in the Force, then tentatively reached for him, taking that final step onto the Falcon to stand next to him. He gestured in the Force, closing the ramp. The bond was open to her from his side as hers hadn't been for him- despite her fearing he would barricade his in retaliation- and finally their feelings met halfway, hers apology and sadness and regret, his almost the same except for the strong flavor of disappointment.

“I'm sorry,” she told him, since it didn't seem to be enough to just say it in how she felt.

“You're a Rebel,” he replied. “I'm not.”

He wasn't. He hadn't been, all this time, but there had been a brief moment in which he'd felt like he had, and everyone had acted like he might be, and she'd still been holding onto that even though she knew she shouldn't. “I know,” she admitted.

“Are we done, then?” he asked, gesturing between them. “With this?”

He could have meant so many things, none of them things she particularly wanted to agree to, but she was so tired of holding herself away, holding him apart from her, and the bond was drawing her in like a tide, gently sweeping her toward him. “Yes, Ben,” she said, stepping toward him. And, knowing she shouldn't, but also knowing she couldn't help it, she opened her side of the bond to him.

There was so much she'd been hiding, and not all of it just the feelings about Leia, about Ammu, the feelings she was worried he'd be able to decode somehow, seeing through them to all the secrets she was supposed to be keeping. She'd been hiding how much she knew she was going to miss him, how badly she wished there was a way he could stay; her deep, secret yearning for an empty spaceship they could board that would take them somewhere else entirely, away from the Rebels and the First Order and war and fighting, for a life they could live together in such a way that neither of them would want to leave. He wrapped his arms around her and she wrapped her arms around him and they stood like that, both heads bowed, allowing the contact that had been denied. It was different from every time before, a tentative, gentle coming together, both of them afraid to risk any misstep that might separate them again. They had so little time together. As always, they had so little time to say, and understand, and feel so much from each other.

“Don't go away again,” Ben said softly, his lips just next to her ear.

“I have to. But not tonight. Ben,” she sighed, “Ammu is the reason. That's why Leia wanted you kept away from her.” She'd meant it to be an olive branch, a reassurance, maybe an encouragement, but as he considered that she could feel that he saw it differently, his emotions souring, hurt, defensive.

“I'm no threat to that child, Rey,” he told her. She said nothing, unable to offer a counter on that front, since that was exactly what Leia saw him as. Rey herself had told Leia that Ben would no more try to hurt Ammu than he would any other child in the galaxy, but Leia had remained unconvinced. “Do you think I am?” Ben asked, very, very softly.

“Not in the way you think, but he's new to the Force,” Rey replied, trying to be diplomatic. “I think Leia doesn't want him to be swayed.”

“By the unfathomably terrible 'Dark side'?” Ben asked sarcastically, and one of his hands lodged itself under her chin, tilting her head up to look at him. She knew what question was in his mind now- the same one he'd asked before, about whether or not it truly mattered- but she still had no answer for him and after a moment he drew his hand away. “I'm sorry,” he said. “I promised myself I wouldn't push you on this.” Rey nodded and Ben sighed, shaking his head, gathering himself in the bond and stepping away. “Come in with me, please,” he said, gesturing behind him towards the main hold. “I want to meditate with you. I have a theory about what might have happened.”

“Okay,” Rey agreed automatically, following as he led her inside. He didn't stop in the main hold, however, instead going through and out to the second hallway, into the crew quarters and the double bed there. He sat on the bed in his meditation pose and looked at her expectantly as she hesitated. This wasn’t exactly what she’d pictured but she shook herself out of her momentary surprise, slipping off her shoes and joining him. Ben hadn't waited for her to get settled more than a moment before he reached for her in the bond, brushing against her, questing. She allowed him in and her sense of him sank into her, but it was different from when he'd done it before. Then he had been investigating her physical body; now he moved as if part of the Force within her, centering on her unsteadiness, seeking out the essential connection that made her a Force being. It was a strange feeling and she had to clamp down on the urge to squirm against it or to try and dislodge it in any way. Physically he reached a hand out for her and she joined her hand with his without having to be asked, their physical connection strengthening their Force connection.

He studied her for what felt like an agonizingly long time but eventually withdrew, and she relaxed, shifting uncomfortably, making sure she was entirely herself again. No matter how well-meaning, no matter that it was Ben himself doing it and he was already a constant presence in her mind, she couldn't imagine a time she would ever be comfortable allowing someone within her. She turned her attention to Ben after a moment, observing him as he considered, his gaze turned inwards, her hand still in his.

“How bad is it?” she asked quietly.

“I'm not sure,” he replied. “It's so faint I almost wasn't convinced it was there at first. But I think what might have happened is some kind of wound in the Force. It's strange,” he sighed, withdrawing his hand from hers. “I don't know how it's even possible for a wound to occur in a person, or by what process that would happen. I don't know how it could have happened in you. Have you asked Leia about it?” he asked in a careful tone, eyes flicking back up to hers.

“Yes,” she said just as carefully. “She seemed to understand what I was saying but we haven't been able to really talk yet. There's been so much to do and she's been busy with Ammu.”

“How did she find him?”

Rey hesitated, not sure how much she was allowed to disclose, but there seemed no real danger in revealing this. “He was part of a First Order shipment of children the Rebels disrupted and hid here. He's been on this planet for years but Leia only came here recently and she found him then.” Ben nodded and Rey wondered if he could sense how much she wanted to tell him everything, the questions she wanted to ask, all things she couldn't bring up because she was, as he'd reminded her, a Rebel, and he was not. “How do you heal a wound in the Force?” she asked instead.

“I'm not sure whether or not you can. I assume there must be away; any time something can be destroyed the same thing can also usually be restored somehow,” Ben said in a gentle but pragmatic way. “How do you feel?”

“Fine,” Rey said honestly. “Since my connection is unsteady I use the bond as my center instead, and that helps.”

“But are you still having trouble with Force manipulation?”

“After what I did with the plants?” she pointed out.

“Relying on your ability to draw on emotion and extreme need cannot replace your baseline connection,” Ben chided. “What you did the with the plants was impressive, but impulsive and unplanned. If you had tried to do the same deliberately, or had planned to do it from the beginning, you might not have been able to access the power that you needed to that extent, if at all. It was a panic response, not a tactical maneuver. I don't discount that you saved us all,” he added when he could tell she was about to point out exactly that. “You know that I'm the last person to discount that, Rey. And your apparent affinity for Force lightning is interesting and surprising, if not just very convenient in that moment. But it's not a substitute for your steady, reliable, innate Force power.”

“I can't heal something I can't understand.”

“Then try to understand it. You may be the only one who can; I haven't been able to tell anything about it from the outside, other than that it may be there, and even that I'm not certain of. Again, Rey, it will take patience, and time.” She clenched her teeth at that but nodded. Time was something the Rebels didn't typically have very much of, and as vital as she was to the Resistance right now it was hard to imagine spending any great amount of of it sitting around trying to chase down vague feelings and problems within herself. Ben smiled slightly as if he knew what she was thinking, and that unsettled her a little even if it was him.

“What are you going to do, when you leave?” she asked, deliberately changing the subject. “Poe said you want to go to a First Order manufacturing system.”

“A manufacturing and mining and recruitment and training system, but yes,” Ben corrected, allowing the obvious diversion. “It's somewhere Hux doesn't care much about and rarely gives more than a passing thought to, so it's a good place to start.”

“So you're just going to fly up to their main dock and demand to see whoever's in charge?”

“It's going to be slightly better thought out than that, but the officers on Hays Major know very well Hux's continuous disdain for them. They're unlikely to want to stick their necks out for him, or at least no further than they can reasonably get away with. Given an alternative it's likely they'll be more interested in the potential advantage in advancement that reinstating me would provide.”

Rey looked away, not sure she agreed but not knowing enough to reasonably disagree. It was hard for her to imagine any portion of the First Order as more trustworthy or loyal than another, but also felt strange to hear Ben talk about his own organization as though he felt much the same. “It sounds very political,” she observed out loud.

“War and politics are pretty much the same thing. War moves a little faster, at least; the threat of imminent death will do that, even for the most corrupt, greediest bastard to ever wield a blaster.”

“Hux?” Rey guessed.

“Is one example, but he's not the worst of them,” Ben corrected, unphased by this unflattering description of his most senior officer. “But greed has never been Hux's chiefest sin.”

Rey shook her head at that, unable to imagine what Ben's other officers were like if Hux was the best he had. “You'll be careful, won't you?”

“I will be. You can't tell me what you'll be doing, can you?”

“No.”

He accepted that and she couldn't help but wonder if she could have been quite as calm or realistic as he was if their positions were flipped, and she was being open and honest about what she was thinking and planning while he hid so much from her. Probably not, she had to admit to herself.

“Rey, what are you thinking?” Ben asked quietly.

“You can't tell?”

“Only the edges of it. The feelings, not the source.”

“I'm going to miss you, Ben,” she said just as quietly. “Even when we're fighting, even when you're mad at me-- I'm going to miss everything,” She shifted slightly, looking down at the bed. “Can I stay here tonight?”

“Yes,” he said immediately.

“Not to do anything,” she clarified. “Just, just to be with you.”

“Yes. I'm tired, too,” he sighed. “I haven't been sleeping well on this planet.”

“Maybe you'll sleep better with me,” she said, not admitting that she hadn't been sleeping well either. How could she have, when he'd been reaching for her and she'd had to deny him, over and over again? When there was so much she couldn't allow herself to feel or think, when she was worried even her dreams might give something away? But tonight she wasn't worried about that, or at least she didn't care enough to worry about it. Ammu's existence had been the main thing Leia had wanted to conceal, but that had been revealed involuntarily by Ammu himself.

Ben laid down carefully and she laid down next to him, not sure what to do, how to behave. He drew her close to him with one arm, reaching for her in the bond, and she reached for him too, and somehow within that they found each other. His mind was a whirl even more than hers was, and she could sense how much he had to say still, how much he had been waiting to say. It was enough to almost make her ask him about it, except that he didn’t seem ready to tell her. There was some determination there to wait and she couldn’t bring herself to try and draw it out of him when he’d been so patient about all the things she couldn’t say. Instead she focused on Ben himself, the feeling that was Ben, lying next to her, close enough to touch; and she did, wrapping an arm around him, stroking her hand across his shoulders, down his back. As grateful as she was for the Force bond this was the one thing it couldn’t give them, the simple and rare privilege of being physically together.

By the time Rey fell asleep she'd turned over, her back to his chest, her legs a tangle with his, feeling his breathing against the back of her neck as he kept his arm looped around her stomach, as though he could keep her here with him forever. She wished that he could.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Original tumblr A/N: Honestly I could have written this scene forever, if I wasn’t at least making a token attempt at keeping these chapters to a manageable length. Yes, that’s right-- this is my idea of ‘manageable’
> 
> My tumblr:
> 
> https://how-do-i-turn-this-thing-off.tumblr.com/


	36. The departure from Ord Canfre, the promise

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The scene that everything has been leading up to

The ship they’d given Ben was even more decrepit than the Falcon and when Rey saw it she couldn’t help but smile reluctantly, almost wondering if this was Poe’s idea of a joke. In any other circumstance Ben would have probably complained about it loudly to her the moment he saw it, but today was the day he was leaving Ord Canfre to make his way back to the First Order and she had a feeling he would have felt the same about the occasion even if he was leaving on the most luxurious cruiser they could find in the entire galaxy. As it was he glanced at the ship and limited himself to commenting to Poe, “You do like your antique Corellian freighters, General.”

“The Ghost is one of the best we’ve got,” Poe replied, looking the ship over fondly. “Over eighty-seven illegal upgrades, plenty of firepower, impossible to track– in some circles she’s as famous as the Falcon.”

“A high recommendation.”

“Sleeps four, so that’s what we’re going with,” Poe continued as if he hadn’t heard. “Finn, of course, and Chewie’s going as pilot–.”

“That won’t be necessary, Finn will be enough,” Ben cut in.

“Chewie requested the mission specially, and he’s a friend, so you’re just going to have to put up with it,” Poe countered, not looking around. “You’ve got Rose in the last bunk, so that’s the crew.”

“Absolutely not,” Ben said much more decisively, stepping toward Poe so the Rebel would be forced to look up, towering over him by a head at least. “This is going to be an extremely dangerous mission, no one’s coming who isn’t a fighter.”

“Rose can handle herself,” Poe said, seeming, Rey privately thought, very much like he wanted to believe that but not very much like he did. “Besides, she’s been riding my jet stream everyday about going on the mission as soon as she heard you were headed to Otomok.”

“Rose is from Otomok, Ben,” Rey put in before he could keep arguing about it. “She and her family were slaves in the Hays ore mines.”

“She knows the system, the people, the ins and outs of the whole operation,” Poe said, propping his hands up on his hips. “Believe me, I told her to leave you up to luck and the Force to decide things, but she wasn’t having it. If I didn’t put her on the Ghost I think she would have shot me in my sleep.”

Ben stared between them, his expression hard. “If you’re trying to convince me this is a good idea by telling me she has a personal stake in it then I’m even less convinced than before.”

“She’s already on board, Ren,” Poe said, jerking his head toward the Ghost. “You want to be the one to take her back off again, be my guest.”

Ben sighed, shaking his head. “You don’t know what you’re putting at risk with this, General. A First Order with Hux at the helm will be infinitely worse than anything you could have ever expected from me.”

“Then make sure that doesn’t happen,” Poe said uncompromisingly. “You’ve had a lot to say about how all this is just one General you’ve got to take care of and you’ll be able to settle it. Time to put your credits where you mouth is. And you get my people back to me, Kylo Ren,” he added, sticking a finger in Ben’s face. “Chewie, Finn, Rose. And the ship too, actually, and in one piece, or we’ll have a score to settle like you’ve never seen before.”

“No promises in combat, General,” Ben said, looking away. Poe shook his head and left, not glancing at Rey as he passed, headed for the hangar door. Ben studied the Ghost with a critical eye, noticing what any even halfway decent pilot couldn’t fail to miss: the scars from old battles long ago, the much more recent scars that had been hastily patched up, the char marks of hidden gun ports, the scrappy additions, the rusting paint job that could have used an update a decade ago or two. Poe had assured Rey twice that the Ghost handled well, that she was practically undetectable by any standard, that he’d been at her helm himself more than once and there was no ship he’d trust more for a job like this. She wish she’d been able to take it for a flight herself just to be absolutely sure, but that was almost certainly unnecessary. It was a relief that Chewie was going along, at least; if there was any being alive who knew more about Corellian freighters than that Wookie she couldn’t imagine it was very much more. It was just her nerves constantly telling her that everything was at risk with this mission, that if it ended badly that’d be the end of everything, that the odds outnumbered them so heavily as to be nearly impossible. There was a tiny, panicky part of her that felt that way about every mission and had been proven wrong several times before. Ben was powerful, well-trained, smart, and determined, maybe more than anyone else she knew. He wouldn’t get himself and her friends into a situation he wasn’t sure they’d be able to get out of.

“Guess that means I won’t be asking you to promise to come back to me,” she half-teased once the sound of Poe’s footsteps had faded and they were left alone.

“I’m not coming back to you, Rey.”

“You know what I mean.”

“I don’t,” he disagreed, turning towards her. “How long is this Resistance movement going to drag on? Years? Decades? There’s always going to be someone up for a fight, some idiot with a blaster looking to tear everything down and build a shiny new galaxy in its place. You really think that’s going to make a difference? That someday someone perfect and good and pure will be ready to lead us all into some glorious future?”

“Any future’s better than the one we have now,” she said, frowning at him. Did they really have to have this conversation at this exact moment?

“That’s not true and you know it,” he said, something urgent in his tone, his feeling in the bond like a well overflowing with what he wanted to say, now that this was the last chance he might have to say it face to face. “Why can’t the First Order be the ones to make things better? What does it matter which idiot with a blaster it is, as long as they change things in a way that’s better for everyone?”

“Or an idiot with a lightsaber?” Rey suggested, seeing dimly where this was going.

“I’m asking you if it matters, Rey,” Ben said, so close now she could nearly feel the heat of his body, everything suffused in the deep yellow light of the below-gas portion of this planet. “If it does what needs to be done, does it matter?”

She studied him for a moment, not sure what was being asked, or rather, how many things were being asked all at once. It was dizzying, everything he was saying, and she felt as though she could barely keep up. “We have to do things the right way, Ben.”

“Whose right way? Is there only one right way? What if-,” he added quickly, seeing she was about to respond, “-what if there was a way that was different, but not necessarily bad? Like the Force lightning was not necessarily bad. What if what needed to happen happened in a way that wasn’t what you expected? I’m saying give me a chance,” he said, looking down at her, his presence alone seeming to fill the hangar so that she couldn’t look away from him even if she’d wanted to. “The First Order doesn’t have to be what it has been, and it doesn’t have to be responsible for a terrible future that’s worse than any other future we could have.”

“Give you a chance for what, Ben?”

“Let me do things a different way. Convince them,” he added, glancing outside the hangar then back to her again. “You can, if you try. Poe, Leia, Sergeant, all the others– it doesn’t have to be a war. It doesn’t even have to be a fight. Convince them that the right way doesn’t have to be the one they expected.”

“And then what?”

“Let me try, Rey. Once the First Order’s mine again let me make it something else. Or this just goes on,” he said, his voice dropping to an exhausted, almost plaintive sigh. “On and on, and we’re always the worst thing that could ever happen to the whole galaxy, and you’re always millions of lightyears from me, forever.”

She examined him for another long moment despite how little time they had to waste, weighing it in her mind, weighing his feeling in the Force. It reminded her, oddly, of the day of the Red Battle, when he’d stood in Snoke’s throne room and said something that had seemed very different then but now struck her as very similar. But that offer had been on terms she never could have accepted, and this one–.

“How serious are you, Ben?” Rey asked, already half making up her mind but needing to hear him say it.

“I’ve never been more serious about anything,” he insisted immediately, his hands reaching for hers as he flared with almost reluctant anticipation, thinking she might be willing to consider the idea.

“Then what if we make a bet? Not even a bet, a deal,” she said, taking his hands as he offered them. “If you can take the First Order back, I’ll try. I don’t know if I can do it, but I’ll try to set up a meeting, at least. I know Poe would. I don’t know about the others but he’d probably hear you out. BUT if you try to go back to the First Order and can’t,” she added before he could agree without hearing the whole thing, “or if Hux has taken it over completely and you can’t stop him; if you go there and find out you won’t be able to get back in like you thought, then we do it the other way around.”

“Meaning?” he asked, his feelings mingled hope and suspicion, both in one.

“Meaning you join our side and we fight together. Take the First Order down together. You’ve already said that if Hux is in charge things will get much worse, right? Stop that from happening, but from the other end.”

“Rey–,” he sighed, exasperation clear in every line of him. “You’re not thinking about how impossible that would be. Why in the galaxy would you believe the Rebels would want me even if I wanted them? Just because Poe might not think I’m a bastard through and through anymore, that doesn’t mean I can just throw my saber in the ring at any time and expect a warm welcome. Besides, Poe takes his orders from Leia and her advisors, and we both know how Leia feels about me.”

“Ammu–.”

“Is not the blanket pardon you think he is,” Ben said, shaking his head but at least not trying to back away or let go of her hands. “Have you suggested this to her?”

Rey hesitated, knowing Ben would feel her conflict in the Force but unable to do anything about it even so. “I wanted to,” she admitted, “but not before I talked to you about it.”

“And Poe? Sergeant? Chewie, Rose, Finn, R2-D2?” he added sarcastically. “Anyone at all?” He could feel that she hadn’t even without her having to say it and shook his head at her. “Rey–,” he started, then stopped himself, blowing a breath out as he looked down at their hands. “Rey,” he said again after a long moment of his own, “you talk to them first. Find out if there’s even a chance at all that I would be given a place in the Resistance. Start with Leia,” he added, all but rolling his eyes even though in the bond she could feel the sting that the words caused him. “May as well get that disappointment out of the way.”

“And if I can?” she pushed, squeezing his hands as if he was going to try to pull away, which he hadn’t. “What if I can convince them, Ben? What if I get them to say yes?”

“Then I would warn you that using the Force to control minds wears off after a while,” he said, actually rolling his eyes this time. She stared at him, wanting to insist that it could be done, feeling her own doubt as clearly as she knew he would. She might have a chance with Poe, with Sergeant, with her other friends, but with the rest of Command? With Leia herself?

“Your friends don’t like me because of me, Rey,” Ben added, feeling what she was feeling. “They trust you and they’re willing to tolerate me for your sake, and even then it’s only when their backs are against the wall and they don’t have any other option. But if you let me try it my way,” he said gently, softly, letting go of her hands with one of his so he could brush his fingers across her cheek, “then there’s a chance. A real chance. One I can guarantee, and not one that relies on others. Just on us.”

Rey stared at him, silent, torn, wanting to believe everything he said but sure that it wouldn’t, couldn’t, be that easy. Still, to refuse Ben in this moment almost felt dangerous, or even cruel; it was clear that what he’d said, the offer he was making, was something he’d had in mind for a long time, probably as far back as the Red Battle, if only in part. And if there was a chance, at all, to end this, not just for them but for everyone else involved in this bloody and seemingly continuous war, shouldn’t she try at least on their behalf? Or just agree that it was possible?

“Solo, we’re wheels up any minute,” Finn called, and they turned to see him coming down the Ghost’s loading ramp. “You ready or what?”

“A minute, Finn,” Ben said, turning back to Rey deliberately. Behind him Rey could see Finn shaking his head at them but retreating into the Ghost, calling something up to Chewie. The Ghost’s engines slowly powered up, sending out a cloud of dust as they began to fire one after the other.

“I think he took you literally,” Rey said to Ben, unable to help the smallest of smiles.

“Rey, give me your answer,” Ben said, ignoring the ship behind him, his eyes and focus fixed entirely on her. “Don’t leave me waiting until our next bond meeting, or until the next disaster or the next time we face each other across a battlefield. Give me a chance. One chance.”

“Give us a chance, too,” Rey insisted, letting go of his hands and reaching up to his shoulders. “Let me try. Let me at least try.” He hesitated, indecision warring with the longing and doubt she felt in him equally, but it wasn't enough, it still wasn't quite enough. “I’ll agree if you will," Rey offered. "You take the First Order back, I’ll get them to have a summit with you. You can’t take the First Order back, you join us.” He visibly hesitated and she stood up on her toes, bringing her mouth to his, her lips barely an inch away so that she could feel his breath fan across her face. “Say it,” she begged. “Say it, Ben Solo.”

He hesitated, dipping his head toward hers but not trying to close the gap between their lips. “Then you have to promise the same thing, Rey. If I lose, I’ll come back to you. And the Rebels,” he added, able to sense the exact argument she’d use to respond to that. “But if I win, and if I take the First Order back, then I want the summit and I want you. Fair is fair,” he said, dropping his voice to a whisper as his lips brushed hers. “I’m your condition, so you… you’re my condition.”

“I join the First Order?” she clarified, sure she couldn’t have heard correctly, dizzy again with him, with the impossibility of what he was saying, what he was asking. Having this conversation so close, right up against him, was going straight to her head, making it almost sound half possible, making it almost sound half right.

“You join the First Order,” he agreed, hands on her back, pulling her into him. “You join me.”

She shouldn’t. She shouldn’t even think it, shouldn’t consider for a moment pretending that was even an option, shouldn’t agree to anything even remotely like it. But Ben was… Ben was her, in her mind, in the bond, in her heart, until all she could breathe and think and feel right now was him. And she almost wondered if it mattered how it happened, who was right, or more right, or right in a different way, if it brought them back together. How wrong could anything be, really, if it brought them back together?

“Alright, Ben,” she breathed, leaning into him, but he pulled back just far enough to keep their lips apart.

“Promise,” he ordered.

“No promises in combat.”

“Promise anyway.”

She was defeated and she knew it. There was no point pretending otherwise. He had her in the bond, he had her standing here, he had her any way she could think of. “I promise,” she whispered. “Me for you or you for me. Either way.”

“Either way,” he agreed, finally pressing his lips to hers, a kiss like pure longing, a kiss like the kiss alone could meld them together across the stars, connecting them with a unspoken but unbreakable promise to kiss again exactly the same way, and again, and again, sealing the promise over and over as many times as it took for them to come together and to never, ever again have to come apart.

“Finn’s on his way back,” Rey murmured, breaking away from Ben after what had definitely been more than a minute and had in some ways felt like an eternity.

“I know,” Ben said, gently stepping away from her. “I’ll see you soon, Rey.”

“May the Force be with you, Ben Solo,” Rey said with as much sincerity as humanly possible, her heart beating the words, the bond echoing them.

“May the Force be with you, Rey,” he said, the bond humming with it, and with their mutual hope, their mutual fear. Then he turned away just as Finn came down the ramp to shout for him again, and he walked to the Ghost and boarded. Rey left the hangar by a side door just in time to see the light freighter swoop out into the open air and ascend through the permanent layer of yellow gas blanketing the planet. In only a moment, Ben was gone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Original tumblr A/N: finally, we get to the conversation that needed to be had, the do-or-die moment of this couple. The really interesting thing is which to hope will happen more? It’d be very, very fun to write either way
> 
> My tumblr:
> 
> https://how-do-i-turn-this-thing-off.tumblr.com/


	37. Rey approaches Leia

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rey talks to Leia about Ben's plan

Rey found Leia on top of the mountain nearest the abandoned Imperial Ordnance Depot the Rebels were using as their base, meditating with her face tilted up to the sun, suspiciously alone. “Where's Ammu?” Rey asked, momentarily distracted from why she'd come.

“Getting in trouble, probably. Ani is with him,” Leia added, naming the akk pup that was always at Ammu's side. She tilted her face back down to earth and opened her eyes, looking at Rey. “I felt Ben leave.”

Rey nodded. Leia only called Ben by his real name when she was alone with Rey; in front of everyone else it was either Kylo Ren, the Supreme Leader, or 'their leader', even though after what had happened pretty much all of the Rebels knew who he really was at this point. It was the kind of detail that never seemed promising at the best of times but struck Rey as especially problematic now, though it probably wasn't the time to bring it up. “I wish you could have seen him,” Rey said instead.

“I didn't want to.”

“Even after he already knew about Ammu?”

“Yes, even then, though I still wish he never had,” Leia said, frowning as she stood and climbed down from the spur of rock she'd been sitting on. Her expression lightened a bit as she looked outward, surveying the vista of bright blue sky up above and the sea of yellow cloud down below, occasionally interrupted here and there by the peaks of other mountains, rising above the miasma. “I've found out how Ammu got down to him, at least; he said Ani showed him how to wrap the Force around his mouth and nose and use that to breathe through. I'm still not sure how that would work myself, but apparently it made enough sense to Ammu to get him through the clouds and down to the ground safely. Ani won't tell me how he knew that but I've long suspected those big eyes of theirs let akk dogs see the living Force, even though they can't directly manipulate it. It would explain why they're attracted to those who are Force sensitive more than any others.” She finally turned to Rey, her expression still outwardly serene but something tight and unhappy around her mouth. “I felt him leave you, Rey.”

Rey stared, not knowing for a moment how to respond to that phrasing. “He didn't leave me,” she disagreed finally, even though he undoubtedly had. “He's going to try to take back the First Order. If he does--.”

“How like his father he is,” Leia interrupted with a sigh, turning away towards the path Rey had just come up. To the right it continued up the mountain past them, to the peak where a Rebel lookout had been built, but Leia turned left, down the branch that led back through the clouds to the surface below. “Han thought he could keep one foot in and one foot out, too. Of course for him the foot that was out was in petty crime, not in the Empire.”

“Leia, please let me talk to you about Ben,” Rey insisted, staying close behind her as they started down the mountain.

“I know already, Rey,” Leia said, not turning around. “I could feel your hope. Your indecision, your fear; I could feel his too. And how you care for each other,” she added, much more softly. “That most of all. You both radiated it so strongly in the Force; if there were other sensitives here they probably would have felt it for a mile around.” 

“He has a plan, Leia."

“I'm sure he does. They always do, these young men with their starships and their blasters and the galaxy forever at their fingertips.” She stopped in the shadow of the lookout, breathing in deeply, seeming to savor the fresh, clear air but for the concern that continued to bleed off her in the Force. “Well, you might as well tell me,” she said, turning back to look at Rey. “What has he thought up to counter Hux's coup?”

“I-- I don't know,” Rey admitted, realizing she'd never asked about that specifically despite many chances to do so, which seemed suddenly and simultaneously both like a glaring oversight and also like something Ben had probably avoided telling her on purpose, a suspicion she could hardly be mad about considering all that she'd kept from him. “That's not the plan I'm talking about.” Leia waited expectantly but Rey found herself hesitating, glancing up toward the lookout, wondering if they were close enough to be heard by the scouts who occupied that perch day and night. Not that Ben's plan- their plan- was all that secret, necessarily, just that it seemed like it should probably be kept quiet for as long as possible until all the portions of it came together.

“Let's get back to the base and find that apprentice of mine,” Leia said before Rey could make up her mind, also glancing up toward the lookout, seeming to understand what was making Rey hesitate. “No doubt he's with the other akk dogs again.” Rey nodded but Leia had already turned away, continuing on to the frame where gas masks were hanging for Rebels going up and down, each of them taking one and strapping it on. Now that Ammu could go anywhere regardless of the poisonous gas separating the peaks of the mountains from their bases he was as likely to be there as much as anywhere else; he wasn't a child who talked much about his interests or habits, when he talked at all, but from what Leia had told Rey Ani had only recently befriended Ammu and seemed to be the first to ever successfully do so, and vice versa. Since then the boy and the akk pup had been inseparable, which was cute now but Rey suspected would be substantially less endearing in a few months when Ani grew to his full size. The few wild adult akks she'd seen were roughly the same size as large speeders, with heavily armored tails about as long as the rest of their bodies and sharp, pointed teeth that may not be generally used to eat humanoids but certainly seemed capable of the exercise. Rey had only seen them at a distance and hadn't minded keeping it that way.

The path led down into the yellow mists, the leading edge of which always seemed to come up more suddenly than Rey expected. One moment she had clear air above and mist down below- the next the ragged edges of the clouds would be near her feet- and a step later she was completely engulfed. One step after that it was so thick she could hardly see her hand in front of her face. The Rebels had bordered the path on both sides with a rope rail, one for people going up and one for people going down, and by keeping a hand on the down rope Rey could navigate fairly well, her eyes glued to the path, making sure she didn't lose her footing. Other than that all she could see in front of her was the back of Leia's head, looking oddly misshapen with the thick rubber hoses of the gas mask around it, and Leia's hand on the rope, holding and letting go, holding and letting go. They stayed close together, picking their way down, then as soon as it had started the clouds lifted and they were safely below, headed into the open air.

“The local akk dogs tend to congregate over in the swampy areas where they can hunt for amphibians,” Leia said as they took off their gas masks and hung them on the waiting lower frame, nodding toward the path that led that way. Rey turned down it without comment, heading away from the base and into the wilds of Ord Canfre, which she had had neither reason nor desire to explore much so far. There was something eerie about the below-cloud surface of Canfre; maybe it was the constant murky yellow of the light, the sounds of akk dogs calling to each other in Force speech far off in the distance, or the wary cast-off children that haunted the base, peeking around corners and watching the few Rebels that were left go about their work. They didn't make for an impressive population; Rey had known for a while that the Resistance was struggling for recruits but she hadn't realized just how bad it had gotten. Even with a few new people trickling in every now and again the force that had been amassed on Canfre barely filled even the shored-up ruins of the original Depot.

“We seem to be alone now, Rey,” Leia said from behind, interrupting her gloomy thoughts. “What was it you wanted to tell me?”

“Ben has a plan,” Rey repeated, slowing down so she and Leia were walking side by side. “Not the plan to get into the First Order- I mean, he probably has that too- but a plan for after. After he's in control again. He wants a summit.”

Leia frowned, her gaze sweeping a wide circle around them as they left the far edges of the base for the grasslands beyond, stepping into a sea of gently undulating yellow to match the sky above. “What kind of summit?”

“He said he wants time. Time to change the First Order into something better. Time to prove that he can.”

“Change it how?”

“He didn't say,” Rey admitted, already cursing herself for not getting more details out of Ben when they'd been talking about this. She'd been too blindsided by what he'd wanted to really parse it through- to say nothing of too caught up in Ben himself, if she was being brutally honest- and Leia was already spotting all the gaps that Rey hadn't been paying attention to. “He said that he thinks the First Order can be the right thing for the galaxy, can bring a better future to the galaxy, if he has a chance to change it, but he didn't talk about the changes he wants right now. He was mostly trying to get me to agree to give him the chance.”

“It's easy to give someone a chance, Rey,” Leia said softly, “but much harder to take a chance back if it doesn't go the way you want.”

“I know, but what if we just agreed to meet him? What if the Resistance agreed to hear him out?”

Leia stopped, frowning, and for a moment Rey though she was considering it but then Leia moved in the Force, reaching out in front of them. Turning that direction Rey noticed they'd nearly reached the swampy area Leia had mentioned, an area populated by oddly shaped orange hillocks that turned out to be the rounded backs of akk dogs. As Rey watched one of them raised its head above the grasses, turning its bulbous eyes toward them.

“Ammu's not here,” Leia sighed. “And it doesn't feel like he's been here for a while. That boy,” she added, shaking her head as she withdrew her Force manipulation back into herself, turning back. “If I want him to stay in one place longer than a moment I think I'm going to have to start tying him down.”

“Will he be on the base?” Rey asked.

“I don't know. As far as I can tell he doesn't have any friends on the base. He doesn't seem to want to talk to the other children, or play with them, or even be around them. If he could turn himself into an akk dog and run away with them instead I think he wouldn't hesitate.” She shook her head, eyeing the crumbling Ordnance Depot in the distance. “It'd be difficult to agree to a summit with the Supreme Leader the way things are now,” she continued. “There's a great deal that could go wrong, even if Ben doesn't mean it to, and this coup from General Hux doesn't make it seem as though he's in full control of his people if the worst should happen. What if another officer turns against him and decides to use the summit to wipe the Resistance out? What then?”

“Ben wouldn't let that happen,” Rey insisted.

“Ben might not have as much of a choice in the matter as he'd like you to think he does, or even as he thinks he does. He hasn't been Supreme Leader very long and he's not doing too well at it so far. I wish it were possible, Rey,” she added. “I really do. And I hope that you can find a way, somehow, and that he can too. But even if Ben can take over the First Order again that doesn't automatically mean that a guarantee of safety from him would result in a summit that would be truly safe.”

“There's more,” Rey told her. “He also promised that if he can't take over the First Order like he planned he'll come back and join the Resistance.”

“He said that?” Leia asked sharply, stopping mid-step and turning to look at Rey.

“Yes.”

“And you believed him? Truly believed him, in the Force, in your bond?”

“I did,” Rey said firmly. “It was while we were in the hangar, and you said you could feel him, too. He wasn't lying. He promised and he meant it.”

Leia studied Rey, tracing her over with her eyes as though seeking some reassurance, some further guarantee that what Rey was saying was true. “And when would this happen?” she asked slowly.

“Right after the mission, I guess,” Rey said. “When he gets back with the others.”

“Assuming they would survive the failure of the mission.”

“He would. They would,” Rey corrected herself.

At last Leia looked away, mulling that over. “I'd like to believe that is possible,” she said slowly, reluctantly, “but there's so much Ben has done. So much the Resistance has seen him do. To fight with him, side by side--.”

“We did fight with him, for days. And even Poe said several times we would have been wiped out if it wasn't for Ben.”

“And you would have been dead if it wasn't for him, I know,” Leia said, reaching out almost absentmindedly and squeezing Rey's arm in a comforting way as she turned back toward her. “He did some incredible things and saved our people if not the Resistance itself, in some ways. But Rey, all of that was to achieve something he wanted. It suited his ends.”

“That doesn't mean he didn't mean it,” Rey said. “Plus he might have been able to get off that planet by himself if he really wanted to, he could have waited for the First Order to send a ship he could steal, or mind controlled some of the stormtroopers into letting him on to one that was already there--.”

“But that was only part of what he wanted, Rey. A ship isn't that important in the grand scheme of things. What he really wanted- wants- is you.” Rey looked away, not sure what to say, but could still tell Leia was smiling at her in a wistful, knowing way. “Your forget that my son is not the first Skywalker or Solo man I've ever met,” Leia continued. “I've known a few of them, and if there was one thing they had in common it was single-minded focus when they were trying to get something they really wanted, especially if that something was a someone. There was more between you two in that hangar than just generally caring what happens to one another.”

“Yes,” Rey admitted, turning back to her.

“What else did you promise him?” Leia asked, her brow furrowing with concern, mouth still tight with unhappiness-- tight in exactly the way Ben's was when he was unhappy, Rey belatedly realized. “I could feel your hesitation from the start, both with him and with me, and I don't think it's just because you know how impossible these plans of his are.”

“I promised-- I promised the same thing he did,” Rey said, almost stuttering on the words, the one thing she hadn't wanted to reveal, had wanted to keep hidden even from thinking it herself as long as she possibly could. But she couldn't hide it from Leia, not now, and especially knowing Leia would sense it anyway. “He said if he lost he'd come to me, and I said if he won I'd-- I'd go to him.”

“To the First Order?” Leia asked incredulously.

“Yes, to the First Order.”

“Oh, Rey--.”

“I know,” Rey said, cutting her off in her hurry to get it out, “but it was worth it, wasn't it? I don't think he'll be able to get back into the First Order as easily as he says, but if he does he really could change things, and he will especially if I'm with him. I know he will.”

Leia had tears in her eyes at the end of this speech, and when she squeezed Rey's arm again her fingers trembled very slightly. “Oh Rey,” she said again. “I wish I had your faith. I wish I had your love. But these things Ben said, they're just words. He can't really promise you them because there's nothing he can guarantee, nothing he knows for sure.”

“I believed him,” Rey insisted, a little alarmed by this take on things but still buoyed by the feeling of Ben in the bond, his surety, his determination. “I know he meant it.”

“Even if he did, my dear,” Leia said quietly, wiping at her cheeks as she turned back towards the base, “that doesn't make it possible. He can't will his dreams into existence, even with a Solo for a father and a Skywalker for a mother. Now, where did that apprentice of mine go?” she asked, voice still slightly shaky as she turned back towards the base, starting down the path again. “At this point I'll need to get an akk dog of my own just to track him down.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Original tumblr A/N: Poor Leia. It’s so hard to have hope after you’ve been disappointed so many times.
> 
> As a general note, this is the last chapter of TRLS that I wrote before seeing TROS. I do intend to incorporate some elements of TROS as they come- or to at least leave that option open- but nothing that changes the plot drastically from what it was going to be. There are vast swaths I won’t be pursuing at all; TRLS will continue along TLJ trajectories overall. 
> 
> Thank you so much, as always, for your support and your comments and your general encouragement. It means more than I have the words to say <3 <3
> 
> My tumblr:
> 
> https://how-do-i-turn-this-thing-off.tumblr.com/


	38. Rey approaches Poe

In the end it was Rey who figured out where Ammu might be, remembering the comment Leia had made about being able to feel Rey and Ben together before Ben left-- that any sensitive within a mile could have felt them say goodbye to each other. And when they got to the empty hangar where the Ghost had been sure enough there were Ani and Ammu, Ani sniffing industriously around the edges of the empty space, Ammu standing at the entrance, staring up at the sky. He came easily enough when Leia called him to her side, still watching the clouds as though he could see which way the Ghost had gone, but returning to earth when Leia asked him if he was ready for their own trip, nodding as Ani came to his side.

“You have your things?” Leia asked, looking him over.

“I have Ani,” Ammu said, gesturing that way without looking.

“That's not what I asked.”

“Not everything, Master,” Ammu admitted, dropping his eyes to his feet.

“Then gather them and meet us at Headquarters. Can you do it on your own alright?” Ammu gave her a surprisingly condescending look, for a child, and nodded. “I'll see you there. Stay with him,” Leia told Ani, who also seemed to manage a condescending look, for an akk pup, then scampered to keep up as Ammu trotted away. “They'll get into some kind of trouble between here and there, no doubt, but hopefully we'll be off-planet before I have to hear about it,” she said with a smile, glancing at Rey. “I assume you have your things?”

“Packed and waiting,” Rey replied, pushing aside the brief flush of guilt as she tried not to remember that she deliberately hadn't told Ben how soon she'd be taking off after him; at Leia's request, and for the sake, she was fairly sure, of reminding her that the brief truce they'd had with Ben was over now and it was time to get back to business as usual. “Will you need me until then?”

“I don't think so. More meditating?”

“No, I just want to see everyone before I go. Do you know where Poe is?”

“Up by the munitions sheds again, I think. Those new recruits certainly aren't going to be able to say that they never met anyone important when they joined the Resistance. Make sure to eat something before we take off, I don't know when we'll be able to get food that doesn't come out of a ready meal.”

“Okay,” Rey agreed, turning away and heading in the direction Leia had indicated. The base was unusually quiet today, or maybe it just seemed so with Ben, Chewie, Finn, and Rose gone. She had other friends among the Rebels but those were the people she knew best and without them the crumbling Ordnance buildings suddenly seemed a little more lonely than they had before.

“Rey!” someone called behind her, and she turned to see FN-2188 coming out of a building she'd just passed.

“Hey,” she said, smiling at the former stormtrooper. He must feel a little forlorn too, with Finn gone, but if he was he didn't seem it, catching up to her with his hands in his pockets, his step jaunty as if he didn't have a care in the world.

“Off on your super secret mission soon?” he asked, falling into step with her.

“Just a couple hours to go.”

“Must be pretty hush-hush, I asked Leia if I could sign on and she said it's just you and her.”

“And Ammu and Ani,” Rey pointed out.

“Oh, right, them.” They walked in silence for a few moments, FN-2188 not commenting as Rey led them in a vague course towards munitions. They had to climb a somewhat steep path to get there but neither broke a sweat and they reached the top of the hill quickly enough, the munitions shed appearing before them, a much improved view of the base behind them. Rey continued on, glancing at FN-2188's hands now that they were out of his pockets, unable to help herself. His right hand was healing pretty well and she couldn't help wishing he'd just bring up that she was the one who'd blown off his first two fingers during their confrontation in the tunnels and get it over with. Of course, he'd still been a stormtrooper then, and had been holding her at blasterpoint, but still. At least the prosthetic fingers the First Order had attached for him before he deserted matched nearly seamlessly with the rest of him, being only a shade less tan than the rest of his skin.

“I took your suggestion, by the way,” FN-2188 said, shaking her out of her reverie. “I've been looking up names to see if I like any of them.”

“And do you?” Rey asked, secretly relieved. The first time she'd met him he'd immediately asked him to name her, a somewhat startling request she'd quickly discovered she was completely unable to satisfy. In desperation she'd suggested he make use of the Rebel's extensive records and name himself; he hadn't seemed convinced then, but that had been several days ago.

“I have a couple ideas. I like the Old Republic names a lot; I want to name myself after a Senator, or a Jedi.”

“I'm sure you're as brave as either,” Rey said, stopping just short of the shed and facing him. “You must be, to leave the First Order like you did.”

“I don't think I could have if I hadn't stumbled across Finn.”

“Well, I'm glad you stumbled across Finn, then,” Rey said, shifting her grip on the strap of her staff and wishing she could find a polite method to signal to him to go away. The conversation she wanted to have with Poe was going to be difficult enough without an audience, especially someone neither of them knew well. “What are you doing today?” she asked, for lack of a clearer dismissal.

“Trying to repair old holocrons. It's my own fault; Sergeant saw me spending so much time in the records archives that he assumed I have a taste for archaic tech. And he didn't give me a chance to say I didn't before he assigned me there, so now I'm kind of stuck.”

“Well, it won't last forever. The Rebels will probably be somewhere new soon. Gotta keep moving.”

“That's what I hear,” FN-2188 agreed. Rey shifted, hoping that silence would do the job that subtext apparently could not, but he seemed content to stand on top of the hill with her, surveying the landscape as if neither of them had anything better to do than sightsee.

“Anyway, I have to go talk to the General,” she said, invoking Poe's formal title in the hopes it would lend a little extra weight to her task. “Kind of a sign off, you know. See you later.”

“Oh-- yeah. But may the Force be with you, if not.”

“Thanks,” she replied, very deliberately turning her back on him. He finally drifted away as she proceeded into the shed, trying to ignore the vague feeling of disappointment he left in his wake. Whatever stories were told about her within First Order ranks- and FN-2188 had led her to believe there were more than a few- he seemed unusually anxious to befriend her, to the point where he was all but getting underfoot every time she turned around. It wasn't a distraction she needed but she felt a little guilty turning him away all the time. Maybe they'd be on a mission together at some point and she could actually have a decent conversation with him. She should probably make at least a little bit of an effort, for Finn's sake if nothing else.

The munitions shed was dark compared to outside as she hesitated a couple steps within the door, letting her eyes adjust. Poe was at the other end, leaning against the jamb of the open bay, watching as Sergeant led some of the new recruits in basic blaster drills. The blasters he was using had been modified to fire only very watered shots but could still leave a nasty burn if someone got hit at close range, a danger Sergeant was impressing upon the recruits with his usual amount of blunt foreboding.

“You know, I never had any blaster training, come to think of it,” Rey commented as she came level with Poe, stopping next to him and watching the recruits practice their aim.

“I doubt you need it. You're as good as anyone else we've got.”

“But not as good as you?” Rey asked, picking up on the implication.

“Want to find out?” Poe suggested, smiling, his hand drifting to his blaster. In the Force Rey felt his flush of relief and realized this was their first friendly interaction since they'd faced off on the Falcon. The memory made her tighten her jaw against a vague feeling of embarrassment, looking away. “Maybe not,” Poe observed, letting go of his blaster and folding his arms. “Something up?”

“I wanted to talk to you. Before I leave with Leia. It's... it's about Ben.” Poe frowned but to his credit didn't seem inclined to immediately turn her away, and when Rey stepped back into the munitions shed he followed. She stopped in the center of the shed where they'd be able to see anyone else coming if they were approached and saw Poe take note of their roughly equal distance from each of the entrances as he leaned against a pallet stacked with supplies.

“Is this a conversation I'm going to regret having?” he asked.

“It's important.”

“I'm listening.”

Rey hesitated, not sure how to proceed, equally sure she had to try. Broaching the subject with Leia hadn't gone particularly well but she and Leia were going to be off on their mission for who knew how long, and Poe would be the one who was here. If Ben did succeed, Poe was the one who was most likely to hear about it first. “If Ben gets what he wants and takes over the First Order again, he wants to make some changes.”

“I bet he does. I can think of one officer in particular he might want to make some changes with pretty quickly.”

“I don't mean just that, Poe.” Rey said, sitting on a stack of crates across from him that was high enough to put them at about equal eye level, despite him still standing. “He wants to make some changes between us.”

“Between you and him?” Poe clarified.

Well, that too. “Between the First Order and the Resistance,” Rey told him, not responding to his suggestion either way. It was one thing to tell Leia the whole story regarding the terms of her agreement with Ben; probably not the greatest idea to share it with Poe. “He wants a summit.”

“Why?” Poe asked immediately, not turning a hair.

“I think he wants some kind of truce. Something temporary, to give him time to make the improvements he has in mind.”

“So he wants us to put up our guns and wait to see what he does.”

“Well-- not that, exactly. I mean, he'd be putting up his guns too.”

“I don't see why he would. He has the advantage over us in just about every way, except that we have you.”

“Poe, I'm just asking you to hear him out,” Rey said, trying to keep her tone level. “It would buy us time, too.”

Poe said nothing, looking her over, his expression difficult to read, his mood in the Force inscrutable unless she reached for it deliberately, which she resisted doing. She couldn't just rely on her extra sense of people to have hard conversations like this one; she needed to be able to convince them based on trust, both them trusting her and her trusting Ben. But Poe looked even less likely to be convinced than Leia had been. “How much did he tell you about these plans he's got?” he finally asked.

“Not much, but if you have the summit you can ask him.”

Poe sighed, looking down at the ground, at the prints of his boots in the gritty dust that had sifted in across the floor despite the Rebels’ best efforts to sweep it away every now and again. “Rey, to tell you the truth I almost like Kylo Ren. Or I don't one hundred percent dislike him, which is, you know, pretty good considering. But thinking he's not as bad as I thought and trusting him to honor the terms of a formal agreement between the Resistance and the First Order is a hell of a jump.”

“It's not that bad to just talk to him,” Rey suggested, a little more plaintively than she'd meant to.

“Sure, I'll talk to him. He's got a holocron, I've got a holocron, put enough bluffers between us to make sure he can’t get a fix on the transmission and I'll talk to him all day. But a summit, a formal summit between our two groups, that's serious stuff. That's a risk, a real risk, a big risk. All it takes is one stray signal and next thing you know the only thing standing between the whole damn Alliance and being blown out of the galaxy is whether or not the Supreme Leader feels like it.”

“Poe--.” Rey said, but he stood up, shaking his head and cutting her off.

“I can't take the chance, Rey. And you can't ask me to. Not just for him.”

“What about for everyone else?!” she demanded, standing too. “What if it works, Poe? It could. It could work, and it could change everything!”

“Based on what, Rey?” he demanded right back. “Based on wishing things were different, based on wishing things were easy?”

“Based on HOPE. Based on ending this, finally, for good! And if there's a chance of that it's a chance you should take.” He shook his head again, his eyes slanted away from her and his mouth tight, but for a moment she thought she read some indecision in way he shifted his stance, the tense set of his shoulders, the hands he'd shoved into his pockets. “Poe, you just said you'd talk to him,” she reminded, gently, delicately, trying to toe a line she could only pray existed. “He's got a holocron, you've got a holocron. So just, start there. Ask him all your questions, and let him answer. Hear him out.”

Poe stayed silent another long moment, then sighed. “He'd go for that?” he asked, glancing back up at Rey.

“Yes,” she said with absolute confidence.

“That's a risk, too,” he muttered.

“But if you don't do it you already know that nothing will change,” she pointed out. “And if you do, at least there's a shot.”

Poe stayed silent for another long moment after that, a long moment that stretched until Sergeant finished his training for the day and the recruits filed past, glancing at Poe and Rey curiously as they went but not saying anything. Sergeant followed, nodding their way but not slowing, and once they were alone again Poe finally spoke.

“You asked Leia about this, didn't you,” he said, giving Rey a look so perceptive she could almost swear he'd sensed it on her somehow, despite not having any ability in the Force so far as she knew.

“Yes,” Rey said shortly.

“And she didn't go for it.” It wasn't a question but Rey nodded anyway. “I don't like going against Leia,” Poe continued, “but while you guys are gone I'll be calling the shots, and if you're gone long enough that Ren gets back into power and reaches out I'll hear what he has to say. I'm not promising one damn thing more than that, Rey,” he added, turning towards her to face her squarely, propping his hands on his hips. “But we'll talk, and if he still wants a summit we'll talk about that, too.”

“Thank you, Poe,” Rey said, unable to resist throwing her arms around him in relief. She felt him hesitate, surprised, then he hugged her back. “It'll be worth it. I promise it'll be worth it.”

“Just get back to us in one piece,” Poe said. “And try not to take too much time about it.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: There’s little I have to add to this chapter except to thank all of you, from the bottom of my heart, for your kind words. As always it makes a hell of a distance, and I’m glad you all seem to be enjoying this story as much as I am :)
> 
> My tumblr, with all my stories plus Reylo meta and memes and so on:
> 
> https://how-do-i-turn-this-thing-off.tumblr.com/


	39. A wound in Rose

“So, you don't have a plan,” Finn summarized, his expression pure, almost aggrieved disbelief.

“Infiltrate, isolate the officers, give them a chance to decide whose side they're on,” Ren replied, unamused. “It's the obvious course of action.”

“Right. It's obvious, but you don't actually know how we're going to do it. Which would usually be the plan part.”

“I thought you volunteered for this?”

“I was ASSIGNED to the trip,” Finn corrected. “I VOLUNTEERED to help you see it through, and part of the reason is because I kind of assumed that was something you'd thought of.”

“The Otomok System isn't that complex,” Rose interjected. “It's remote, and the only people living there are almost all miners, but it's been under First Order blockade for years so there's no one in or out unless they've got clearance.”

“Do you have clearance?” Finn demanded, looking at Ren.

“I don't know,” he had to admit. “Probably not anymore.”

“Great. That's great. So not only do you not have a plan for WHEN we get to the planet, you also don't have a plan for HOW we get to the planet.”

Chewie called back over his shoulder into the cramped crew quarters to the effect that Poe had thought of that, and that's why he'd given them the ship they were on. “Well if the Ghost can get through that's half the job done,” Ren replied, privately not sure whether or not he'd really consider it a good thing overall if a First Order blockade could be that easily subverted. “We have an auxiliary craft we might be able to use as a decoy, if things go south.”

“A decoy manned by who?” Finn asked suspiciously.

“Me. Any of you would die.”

“But you'll be fine.”

“I'll have the greatest chance of being fine,” Ren said, refusing to be sidelined by the pronounced doubt in Finn's tone, turning to Rose. “I need to know everything you can tell me about Otomok. I have basic base schematics and a skeleton outline of the officers stationed there, but any information about the area around the base, nearby settlements, any civilians who go in and out, would be invaluable.”

“Well, the base on Hays Major was a lot bigger and more complicated than the base I knew on Hays Minor, I think, but they're still there mostly for ore mining and that's what my family does- did- so I might be able to help with that if we can figure out how the First Order and the mines nearby work together.”

“You're from Hays Minor?” Ren questioned, a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach that he couldn't have ignored if he wanted to.

“Yes,” Rose said, meeting his eyes then looking away.

“But it's still worth it to get her perspective on the system,” Finn said, clearly not picking up on the sudden tension in the room. “It's only one planet over, right? And maybe that's our in-- from the mine side, rather than trying to get in to the base directly.”

“It could be,” Ren agreed, making himself look away as he pulled out his holocron. “This is the information I have; I'll upload it to your datascreens. I also have some basic maps of the planet's surface but they don't cover the mine or anything beneath the crust.”

“This means more tunnels, doesn't it?” Finn moaned, but he pulled out his datascreen just the same. Ren made himself open the relevant information, made himself continue his explanation of the information he'd gathered so far, made himself transfer to them what he could- being extremely careful not to provide the Rebels with any unnecessary First Order information- and all throughout he could feel that tension, swimming back and forth between himself and Rose like an ocean serpent, undulating in the Force with almost overwhelming discomfort and shame. He could barely get through everything he had to say, and it took far more concentration than he'd anticipated to answer Finn's questions when he was done. Chewie had a couple observations to make as well but Rose stayed silent, head down, only speaking when spoken too and then saying very little. Ren couldn't imagine how Chewie and Finn hadn't noticed; every time he glanced at her he found himself dreading what he would have to do more and more. Realistically it was bound to have happened sooner or later, that he would stumble across a sin the First Order had committed that effected one of the Rebels he knew best, beyond merely losing comrades every now and again in the course of indiscriminate and impersonal battlefields. But it seemed particularly hard, somehow, that that Rebel had turned out to be Rose.

“I'll see what the Ghost has got on Otomok, if anything,” Finn finally decided, stretching and looking over what he had on his datascreen so far. “If we can establish a decent link to some local trading systems they might be willing to give us something, particularly on the mines. Chewie, any chance there's a Rebel outpost in the area?” Chewie indicated there wasn't and Finn shrugged. “Might be some sympathizers, though. You never know. We'll put the call out.”

Ren nodded, then took a deep breath, pocketing his holocron and standing to his feet. He wouldn't try to avoid it; if it had to happen it had to be now. “Rose, could I talk to you?”

“What?” Finn asked, looking up in surprise as Rose stood too, glancing between them. “Talk to her? Why?”

“I'll tell you later,” Rose said softly, her eyes on her feet. Ren turned to the rear exit of the crew quarters, where a cramped galley stair led to the main and only cargo bay. If he'd thought the Millennium Falcon was tight then Ghost was practically a floating crypt-- an unpleasant mental image he tried to scrub from his mind the moment he thought of it. Frankly he could have done with a longer walk but they were through the airlock and in the cargo bay before he knew it, and he sealed the airlock behind them once Rose was through and turned to her. She was standing in the empty space with her hands twisted together and her shoulders hunched, still staring at the ground.

“You shouldn't have come,” he said bluntly, then inwardly cursed himself. Not the time, or at the very least, not the observation he should be opening with. “Have you been back, since...?”

“No. I thought I would with Paige, or that when everything was over-- but she died and I've been, you know, in the war.”

“Are you sure you want to?” he asked, not that he had any alternative to offer. What would they do if she changed her mind? Drop her on some other planet? Head for the shipping lanes and try to find someone willing to loop around towards Ord Canfre? Yes, he decided. If they had to. But Rose didn't say anything or make any motion yes or no, and he waited a moment, watching her. “You don't have to,” he added after a while.

“I didn't even know if you'd know about it,” she said, finally looking up at him, her expression agonizingly grief-stricken but not accusatory, which was infinitely worse than if it had been pure hatred. “I didn't know if you'd remember, even if you heard the name. It was just a tiny planet out in the middle of nowhere.”

“I remember, Rose. I felt it. I wasn't there but no matter how far away you are you always feel it, if you're strong in the Force. The destruction of a planet leaves a wound that nothing can disguise.”

“You felt it every time?” she repeated, and finally some of that disbelief he'd expected was starting to filter through.

“Yes.” She didn't say anything, but the next question was only too obvious: why didn't he stop it? Why didn't he save her home? Or at the very least, why did he stand by when he knew what was going to happen, if he had even a chance to resist it? A question he had no good answer for, and never had. Of all the things he'd done, or at least been complicit in, during his time at the First Order, the killing of whole worlds and all the life on them was by far the worst, and the most impossible to forgive. And the silence stretched on and he could feel, in the Force and in his bones and maybe in whatever he had left that he called a heart, that she thought that, too.

“Did you have... people, still, on the planet, when it happened?” he asked, praying she'd say that by some miracle they'd all left when she and her sister did.

“My parents,” she replied, dashing even that faint hope.

“Do you know...?” Rose shook her head, looking down again, and in the Force he could feel something tearing in her, some grief so great that even in his senses he could only approach the edge of it, straining under the pressure of her control, her determination to hold it back, all this long while.

“We could look for them. If they escaped it might have been to Hays Major.” She nodded at the floor but said nothing; it was a flimsy offer, a hopeless ploy to make something right that could never be undone. “Rose...” he tried again, helplessly, but she wouldn't look up. “I-- I'm sorry. For whatever my part was in it, I'm sorry. There's nothing more I can say.”

“You're going back to them.”

“I can make them better. I can't fix what they- what we- did before, but I can make sure it never happens again.”

“That's not who the First Order is,” she disagreed, finally looking up, her face shining with tears that hadn't been there before, tears that tore through him like blaster bolts. “They're evil, and they destroy things that aren't evil like them. And if you're not evil like them they'll just destroy you too, like everything else.”  
A fate that, at this particular moment, he was fairly convinced he deserved. “I'm going to try,” he said, reaching for her, physically with his hand but also in the Force, brushing against the growing hurricane of her emotions. “Rose--.”

“Don't,” she gasped, stepping back from him, almost stumbling in her haste to get away.

“Let me take it.”

“Don't you dare,” she said, hand dropping to her blaster almost as if she intended to use it, eyes locked on his with absolute fury even though her tears were falling thicker and faster every moment. “Don't you dare, Kylo Ren.”

It was the name, more than anything, that made him jerk back, the name and the way she said it, like she was spitting it, like she had to say it quickly to get the taste out of her mouth. There must have been something in his face that showed his emotions in that moment because she flinched seeing his reaction and looked down at the hand on her blaster like it wasn't even hers, jerking it away. “Just go,” she whispered, hugging herself around the middle, arms locked tight, tears staining the front of her shirt, dappling the metal floor. “Just go.”

He wanted to stay, needed to stay, needed to apologize to her again in a way that would make a difference, needed at the very least to draw off some of her pain as an atonement, but he didn't deserve atonement, didn't deserve anything she felt like denying him. It tasted strongly of cowardice to turn away but he did, obeying her condemnation, returning through the airlock, up the galley stair, and into the crew quarters. Finn was sitting up in the cockpit with Chewie now but turned around immediately, eyeing Ren with a frown.

“She's still in the cargo bay,” Ren said, continuing into the cockpit where they could both hear him clearly. “She asked me to leave.”

“Why? What did you say?” Finn demanded, standing out of his chair.

“Nothing that made any difference. You heard her tell us earlier that she's from Hays Minor?” Finn nodded, and even Chewie turned toward him curiously. “The First Order destroyed Hays Minor. When Starkiller Base was complete that was the planet we tested it on. There was no real reason,” he admitted, taking in the stark shock on Finn's face. “There were some Rebel sympathizers there, some local unrest, but the same was true of a dozen planets just like it. I don't know how or why that was the one that was picked.”

“You destroyed her planet?” Finn repeated, like he was choking on the words, like they were sticking in his throat somehow.

“Yes. Rose and her sister had already left, but her parents were still there. She has no reason so far to believe they survived.”

“You killed Rose's family?!” Finn gasped, his emotions boiling in the Force, rage, pain, anger, grief.

“Yes,” Ren said, but he barely got the word out before Finn had slammed into him, knocking him backwards, hard, into the console behind him. Ren barely had time to absorb the impact before Finn's fist connected with his left cheek, sending him to the floor, hard. Finn was right behind, hitting Ren a second time, a third, and only on the fourth blow did Ren reach out in the Force to stop his hand in midair.

“You killed them!” Finn screamed in his face, trying to go for Ren with his other fist, but Ren caught that one, too. “Let me go you bastard! YOU KILLED THEM!” He was raging so much he never saw Chewie stand behind him, plucking Finn away like he was picking up a small child, setting him on his feet on the opposite side of the cockpit.

“Rose needs you,” Ren gasped, getting to his feet, wiping away some of the blood that was trailing down his face. “She's in the cargo bay, crying.”

“You bastard,” Finn snarled, Chewie's arm holding him back as he tried to go for Ren again.

“I know I am. But you can hit me later. Rose needs you.”

“This isn't over, Solo,” Finn said, shaking Chewie off, straightening his jacket. “I am going to hit you again. You can count on it.”

“I'll be here,” Ren muttered, but Finn was already storming away, his feet snapping against the floor hard enough to make the metal ring. Chewie sat back down in the pilot's seat and Ren took the newly empty co-pilot's chair next to him, wiping at his face again. Finn hit hard, and he had more than one wound; in the end he decided to just wait it out and to try and clean himself up later, leaning back in the chair and staring at the stars streaking past without really seeing them. He was so lost in his own thoughts that he didn't realize Chewie had reached across until he felt something nudge his arm and looked down to see a First Aid kit in the Wookie's massive paw. He nodded his thanks but said nothing, taking the kit and leaving it in his lap as he leaned back again, letting himself bleed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Original tumblr A/N: the destruction of Hays Minor is canon, and was covered in the comic explaining Rose Tico’s origins. Whether her parents died at the time or not is assumed, but unconfirmed.
> 
> My tumblr:
> 
> https://how-do-i-turn-this-thing-off.tumblr.com


	40. Meditating with Ammu

Space was quiet and at first Rey relished that, posting up in the Falcon's auxiliary ship and settling her mind, trying to meditate. It felt different without Ben here, especially since his presence still seemed to be in the air somehow, and that coupled with the feeling of Ben constantly in her in the bond made it difficult to draw away into her own mind. She was almost relieved when she was interrupted, glancing up to see Ammu peering in as the airlock between the auxiliary and the Falcon swished open, watching her curiously. For once Ani wasn't by his side and she reached out, feeling the akk dog busily examining the crew quarters.

“Lots of new smells,” Ammu said in explanation.

“I guess there must be,” Rey answered, smiling at him. “Do you want to come in?”

Ammu glanced behind him then made up his mind, slipping inside and closing the airlock door automatically. “You're meditating,” he said, turning back around.

“Yes. Would you like to meditate with me?”

“I don't like meditating,” he replied, but came over and sat across from her anyway, folding his legs like she had, examining her curiously. She'd rarely spent any time with him without Leia around and couldn't help examining him right back, which he seemed to accept. “There was a man here, before,” he said.

“Yes.”

“You kind of feel like him.”

“Do I?” Rey asked, not sure what else to say. He nodded very seriously, placing one hand precisely on each knee as she had.

“Master Skywalker doesn't like him.”

“That's not true. She's been hurt by him. It's hard to be hurt by someone.”

“She says he's hurt a lot of people.”

“He has, but he's trying to change.” Ammu considered that, his dark eyes dropping to the floor, his small hands tightening on his knees. She felt him reach for her in the Force and gently pushed him away; only when he physically started did she realize the probe hadn't been intentional. “It's alright,” she said aloud. “I don't mind.”

“Master Skywalker doesn't like when I can feel her.”

“Well it's not very polite to do it without asking. Why don't you like meditating?” she asked, diverting the conversation the same way she'd diverted his attempted examination, not sure how comfortable she was discussing Leia's instruction practices. Ammu frowned and looked down at his lap. “Is it hard for you?” Rey asked.

“Yes,” Ammu admitted, looking back up.

“It's hard for me too, sometimes. I've had trouble concentrating lately, and trouble connecting to the Force.”

“Why?”

“I got hurt. It's been harder since then.” She took a deep breath, trying to center herself, wondering if these were things she should be telling the child or if they would be beyond Ammu's ability to understand. He certainly didn't seem like he was having too much trouble, his dark eyes scanning her again, and she realized then that his eyes reminded her of Ben's, thoughtful and penetrating, and wondered for a moment what Ben had been like as a Force sensitive child, and if he'd even been a bit like Ammu.

“You don't look hurt,” Ammu observed, bringing Rey back out of her brief reverie.

“No, not any more. The hurt is on the inside now.” She took another deep breath and straightened her back, trying to relax her mind. “Let's try to meditate just a little and see how it feels, okay?” Ammu nodded and as Rey closed her eyes she felt him try to relax too, try to let go of his emotions. She didn't reach out to examine him, sure that would be just as inappropriate for her as she'd said it had been for him, but in her latent feeling of the child she could sense that he was struggling and the difficulty he had trying to let go, trying to seek silence in his own mind. Was that a problem that was common for Force sensitive children? Of course children were such emotion-driven creatures; in a sense their emotions were all-encompassing in a way an adult's were not. And Ammu had not had an easy life even considering how short it had been so far, and whatever he'd felt up to now must have had a significant effect on him.

Rey turned away into her own mind, the bond as her center, trying to let go, trying to prepare herself to do the tedious, difficult work of examining her own imbalance. If it was a Force wound like Ben had said, it was one that she had real trouble getting anywhere near. Even when she did manage to shed all her other thoughts and achieve a calm, purposeful state of mind, something about the imbalance seemed to jar her, as though by its very nature it was impossible for her to maintain her focus around it. Every time she thought she was getting near she ended up shying away, almost instinctively, like flinching from a blow the moment before it had happened. She hoped with time and patience she'd be able to get closer bit by bit, but for now it was more work not to get frustrated than it was to achieve calm in the first place.

Tonight she was having even more trouble than usual. It wasn't just having Ammu there as a distraction, or Ben's echo, but Ben himself. Wherever he was in the galaxy he didn't seem to have gone far before encountering problems, though of what kind she couldn't tell. Whatever he was doing, his emotional response to it kept echoing down the bond, more and more strongly, as his feelings grew and interrupted her again and again. She risked turning that way no more than twice, just to be sure he was in no danger, and the second time was arrested in trying to take her focus back again by the depth of the sadness he was feeling. And that was just it-- it was sadness, simple and profound, weighing him down in a way she'd never felt in him before. There were other feelings too, around the edge, some pain, some regret, some foreboding, wrapping around the sadness like orbiting planets around a gravity well. It was impossible to ignore once felt and Rey gave up and opened her eyes, wondering if she should try to reach out to him or not. He still didn't seem to be in any danger, and it hadn't even been a full day since she'd last seen him; besides, he might ask about the conversations she'd promised to have on his behalf, and while she'd be happy to report Poe's agreement to at least entertain the concept she would be less excited to admit that Leia had turned him down.

Between the bond and her own thoughts Rey was so distracted she didn't realize that Ammu had stopped trying to meditate too, returning to his former pastime of staring at her. “You feel very sad,” he said, in that direct, almost informative tone he had.

“Oh-- it's not me. It's Ben.”

“The man from before?”

“Yes.”

“Why?” Rey shrugged to indicate that she didn't know, trying for a faint smile so Ammu wouldn't think his question was unwelcome. The airlock door opened with a swish and Ani came in, tilting his head to the side as his large, grayish-purple eyes examined the auxiliary vessel. Ammu didn't look up but lifted his arm and Ani came to his side, lying down next to him and tucking his head against his forefeet. Even since Rey had first seen him he seemed as though he'd gotten bigger. “Maybe Ben's thinking about all the people he's hurt,” Ammu said as though there had been no interruption at all. “Maybe that's why he's sad.”

“Maybe,” Rey agreed, not sure whether or not that was likely to be true. Ben had felt a little chagrin before today, and maybe some hurt and regret of his own, but she couldn't remember the last time Ben had felt true sadness that she'd been able to detect. Maybe not since she'd left him on Crait.

“Here you are,” Leia said to Ammu as the airlock hissed open again, revealing her in the doorway. “You're not disturbing Rey are you?”

“We were practicing meditating,” Rey assured her, smiling at Ammu. “I enjoyed the company.”

“Ani says the ship smells funny,” Ammu contributed. “He's been all over and says it needs to be washed.”

“I've never heard an akk dog comment on hygiene before, but maybe it could do with a scrub,” Leia allowed, glancing at the somewhat dingy walls. “I certainly can't remember the last time someone really took any soap to this old heap.”

“Would you like to join us, Master Skywalker?” Rey asked, not sure whether or not she was genuinely hoping Leia would accept. Leia smiled, shaking her head.

“Maybe some other time,” she replied. “Right now I need to talk to you, Rey, and then Ammu and I will practice some lightsaber forms.” Ammu perked up noticeably at that and got to his feet, Ani jumping up with a sigh in the Force that seemed regretful but following at an acceptable pace as Ammu disappeared back into the ship. Leia entered the auxiliary ship as soon as they were gone, letting the airlock hiss closed behind her, seating herself on the built in bench across from Rey. “I wanted to talk to you about what you told me, about your connection to the Force.”

“Oh. Yes?” Rey asked, surprised. So far Leia hadn't mentioned much about Rey's imbalance, but then she'd had a lot of other things to think about on Ord Canfre.

“I've been doing a little scanning, as much as I can without giving our position away,” Leia explained, arranging her robes absentmindedly as she spoke. “The system we're currently traveling to is within a fairly easy flight to Dagobah, where Luke trained with Master Yoda. There's a Force wound on Dagobah that Yoda showed Luke and that Luke showed me, while I was still training. If you like, we could visit it briefly once everything else is done. I wouldn't want Ammu to get too close, of course, but it might give you some insight to experience that wound and try to compare it to what you're feeling. I don't know if you'll get any answers about how to solve it, but at the very least maybe you could be sure that that's what it is.”

“Will we have time for that?” Rey asked, not saying that she hoped by then Ben would already have regained control of the First Order and Leia would have to reconsider a summit.

“I don't think it would be wise to ignore the chance while we're here. A quick visit wouldn't throw us too much off schedule. And I'd like to show Ammu the place where Master Yoda lived. It may be meaningful to him, to visit the former home of a great Jedi legend.”

“It would have made my whole existence when I was his age,” Rey agreed, grinning.

“Yes, and it's quite a bit closer than Tattooine,” Leia said, smiling in return. “Once you've had a chance to experience its effects we'll return to Ord Canfre, unless Poe has moved the Rebels on by then.”

“Do you think it is a Force wound?” Rey asked. “Have you felt many before?”

“Only a few. I don't seek them out, but there's one where Alderaan used to be, and I've visited there to pay my respects. I haven't made it out to what remains of the Hosnian system since Starkiller destroyed that, but I imagine it will be the site of a Force wound as well.”

Rey nodded, hugging her knees her chest against a sudden chill that seemed to creep down her spine. “How can something so terrible be inside a person?” she asked softly, frowning at the floor. “I don't understand how that can happen inside of me without me knowing.”

“Maybe that's not what it is at all. Or maybe it's only the beginning of a wound; like a small rip, or a thin place, where a wound could be in time.”

“Or where a wound was?” Rey asked, looking up.

“Perhaps,” Leia replied, shaking her head. “I wish I did know, Rey, almost as much as I wish you had someone more knowledgeable than me to ask. Have you consulted the Jedi texts about this?”

“I left them on Canfre,” Rey admitted. “I thought they'd be safer with the rest of the Rebels than they would be with us. I looked through some of the clearer passages but the bits about Force wounds weren't very helpful.” They'd been worse than unhelpful, actually; all the texts had to say so far was that Force wounds could be powerful sources of Dark Force energy and that to stay too near them for too long could be dangerous to a Jedi and they should be avoided as a matter of course.

“It's a little too early to despair, Rey,” Leia said, watching her and clearly feeling what Rey wasn't saying in her sense of her. “We still have plenty of things we can try that might be able to help you. And there's no more powerful weapon than your ability to help yourself. If you keep up your meditation, and keep trying to study and pinpoint that feeling of imbalance, you'll find it eventually. I know you will.”

Rey nodded, smiling and unfolding back into her meditation position. “Is there anything meditation can't do?” she teased gently.

“Well, it's not very good at making a hot cup of tea,” Leia conceded, standing. “When you're done come to the crew quarters and we'll have one with dinner. I think I still have a stash hidden around here somewhere.” She left and the airlock hissed closed again behind her, leaving Rey alone with her thoughts. For a moment she let herself drift back to Ben, Ben and the puzzle of what he was feeling, reaching out to him tentatively, but he didn't seem inclined to talk so she drew back into herself. If nothing else she could try to quiet her own mind and maybe, somehow, she could send those feelings of calm and serenity to him, even if she didn't feel them all too strongly herself.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All my Reylo stuffs:
> 
> https://how-do-i-turn-this-thing-off.tumblr.com/


	41. Ren receives an update

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The First Order may not be quite as ready for Ren as Hux would have liked him to think

Finn hadn't spoken to him in four days. Ren supposed he shouldn’t be too surprised- of all the Rebels he'd met, Finn seemed to have by far the most unpredictable temper- but Rose had been talking to him the next day almost as if everything was fine again, and if Rose could manage to at least start to forgive him then he thought Finn didn't have quite as much excuse to hold on to his cold, condemning silence as he would have liked.

“I already knew, though,” Rose said to Ren on day three, noting Finn giving him the cold shoulder once again as he passed Rose and Ren where they were sitting in the crew quarters. “It's harder for him, and plus he was kind involved a little too because he was a stormtrooper so it's just-- it's harder. He wants to do everything right, you know. Sometimes it makes him a little grumpy.”

This was an assessment Ren couldn't sympathize with too much but he kept his mouth shut, watching Finn take the empty co-pilot's chair and make a little bit of a show out of greeting Chewie. “He wasn't involved,” Ren said, turning away from this spectacle and back to Rose. “You can't hold every stormtrooper accountable for everything the First Order did, that's absurd.”

Rose shrugged, clearly uninterested with philosophical debates about blame and accountability, concentrating on the service board she had laid out in her lap, the pieces of a First Order blaster disassembled and laid out neatly in front of her. “When the war's over it won't be about blame anymore,” she said, delicately picking a component up with pliers and scanning it. “People just want to live, you know? That's what I think.”

“Are you going to try to get through the whole crate?” Ren asked, nodding at the blaster, one of several dozen identical blasters Rose had had stowed in the cargo bay with the other supplies before they left Ord Canfre.

“I might,” Rose muttered.

“Find anything?”

“Not yet, but I still can't figure out why some of them are reading as different blast signatures than others.”

“You think they're damaged somehow?”

Rose shrugged again but didn't take her eyes off her scanner, a small frown on her face. “You should talk to him.”

“Finn's more likely to hit me than he is to want to talk.”

“Then talk after he hits you.”

A very pragmatic outlook for someone who wasn't going to get hit. Ren looked back at his holocron, fiddling with the display, not really seeing the images as he flicked through glowing blue maps of Hays Major's surface. If he thought Finn would talk to him after hitting him he almost wouldn't mind, but at this point it seemed Finn would just have to come to it on his own somehow.

Chewie angled his head toward them, saying something about choosing the angle of their approach. “Working on it,” Ren called back, switching to his overview of the Hays system. For all the time he'd spent in the First Order he'd never had to learn the weak points of a blockade, where the patrol pattern could be breached, where scanners would and wouldn't be. To him it seemed about as impossible from one angle as it was from every other. “Port Addis might be our best chance,” he said, standing and crossing to where Chewie was waiting, showing him the coordinates. “It's the only Hays city that still allows vendors in and out, so if we're spotted by line of sight they might think we're one of the refiners coming to pick up a shipment. We can approach by the starboard or rear shipping lane, your choice,” he said, indicating the two general approaches.

“Got something on scanners,” Finn interrupted before Chewie could say anything, his eyes on his screen. “Picking up an unfamiliar ion trail, following behind us just at the edge of radar. Aaand it's gone,” he added in a frustrated tone, fiddling with some sensors. “Every time I think I'm finally getting a good look at it it goes off the edge of the scanners again!”

Chewie remarked that was impossible, that in order to drop out of scanner range so quickly a second ship would have to know not only exactly where the Ghost was and when they were being scanned, but also exactly what kinds of scanners they were equipped with and what their range would be. Ren listened patiently, reaching out to confirm what he suspected.

“I know who it is,” he said once Chewie was done. “Turn around and cut engines.”

“Weapons up?” Finn asked expectantly, finally breaking his silent treatment but not looking at Ren to say it.

“No. We won't need them.”

“Friends of yours?”

“Soldiers of mine,” Ren replied, watching through the windscreen as Chewie wheeled them around and powered the engines down. A moment later they were drifting in silent space, only the mild hum of life support to remind them there was a ship around them at all.

“Still not picking up on anything,” Finn reported after a long and silent moment, reading the sensor input arrays from the Ghost's variety of scanners. “Should we be seeing something by now?”

“They'll have erased their ion trail, now that they know they've gotten us to notice them,” Ren said, making room for Rose as she approached the cockpit curiously, her bits of blaster abandoned.

“Who will?” Rose asked, and at the same moment a light appeared in front of them, a single light that separated into two lights, then four, and became at last the forward lighting array of a modified transport vessel, cutting engines while still a safe distance from the Ghost and drifting with them.

“The Night Buzzard, flag and only ship of the Knights of Ren. I'm turning on comms,” Ren said to no one in particular, reaching over Chewie's shoulder and flipping the relevant switch. “This is Ren,” he said, watching the ship across from them as he reached out with his senses to see who was on board. “Just you, Kuruk?”

“We've been busy,” a heavily vocabulated voice replied after a moment's pause. “Thought it wasn't you at first.”

“Glad you decided to check before opening fire,” Ren replied, reaching through the Force into the other ship and manually powering down its weapons. “You're making my crew nervous.”

“It IS you,” Kuruk said in a pleased-sounding way, making no effort to bring the weapons back online. Finn and Rose both glanced at Ren then at each other, frowning.

“Report,” Ren ordered, ignoring them.

“Hux has been busy too, while you've been away. Took over most of the armada and tried to have us pushed out the nearest airlock. Went not so well for him.”

“I can imagine. No chance one of you managed to get him on the way out?”

“Not this time. Burned up his little ship and a few of his nearest outposts, though. Been keeping him busy.”

“Good,” Ren said, but Kuruk wasn't quite done.

“The others are still after the Supreme Council, if you care. Couple turncoats made it to Hux before we managed to head them off but we got Pryde and Parnadee, and almost got Griss, too. Sent him in still limping after the Buzzard was done with his ship, at least.”

Ren was silent for a moment, digesting this information. He hadn't had any way to know what the Knights of Ren would do once he was off-grid and the coup against him was in full swing but he'd been sure they would be out there destroying something, either in his name or their own. But the fact that they'd gone beyond First Order High Command and were working their way through his own Council was uncommonly direct, even for them. “Who are you after now?”

“Who do you want us to be after now? Besides Hux, of course.”

“Anything you can find on the ground,” Ren decided out loud. “If General Parnadee's dead Hux's ground teams will be a shambles until he can replace her. Trace away from Otomok, I'm preparing an assault there. Spread out his attention and his resources.”

“'Anything we can find'?” Kuruk confirmed.

“Especially if its munitions or dry docks. If he's got a ship he's working on anywhere in the galaxy make sure he's only got half a ship or less by the time you're done with it.”

“Should the rest of us be talking about this?” Finn pointed out dryly, gesturing in a circle to himself, Rose, and Chewie.

“You have something to add?” Ren asked.

“Who's the scum?” Kuruk asked at almost exactly the same time.

“Give me a second, Kuruk,” Ren said, reaching over towards the comms switch again, but Chewie cut them out for him. “Thanks. What is it, Finn?” he repeated, turning towards Finn, who was glaring up at him from the copilot's chair, arms crossed against his chest.

“'What is it'?” Finn repeated. “Well for a start, who is this guy? How did he find us? How do you know him? Why does he creep me out?”

“He's a Knight of Ren, and he's one of my most loyal soldiers. I told him to follow us once we had the Ghost on a solid heading.”

“And you didn't tell us he was coming because...?”

“Because I wasn't sure if he was coming. The Knights are a law unto themselves, if they'd been busy somewhere else they might have decided it wasn't worth their time for a week or so. You don't make plans around the Knights, you just give them something to steal, kill, or blow up,” he summarized, crossing his own arms. “They're better left to their own devices.”

Finn leaned back in his chair, eyeing Ren up and down. “I want to meet him,” he decided out loud. “If I have to make a report to Poe about what we're doing out here then I want to be able to tell him that I met your creepy friend Kuruk, not that I just heard his vocoder on speaker.”

“It won't make any difference if you do or not; Kuruk wears a helmet at all times that shields his face completely, all the Knights of Ren do. He won't remove it in front of you, especially if he knows you want him to. Besides, I don't want the Knights to meet you,” he added as an afterthought, “or any other member of the Resistance, for that matter. Better to keep them focused on causing problems for the First Order, not on what I'm doing or who I'm with.”

“And what do I tell Poe?” Finn challenged.

“That I'm taking back the First Order like I said I would,” Ren said, turning away from Finn and nodding to Chewie, who flipped the comms back on without comment. “Kuruk, tell the other Knights I want maximum damage. The bigger the better.”

“You're the boss,” Kuruk said, but the Night Buzzard had fired its engines, inching closer like some sort of curious mechanized predator, it's forward lights passing over the Ghost. “Anything else I should know?”

“That I'll be in a position to relay clearer orders soon. You'll know when. Until then, the Knights are released.”

“Our favorite thing,” Kuruk replied, but the Buzzard stayed with them a moment longer as Chewie cut the comms again. When the Ghost did not respond to the Buzzard's circling it brought its weapons back online, but Ren shook his head at Finn who very, very reluctantly drew his hands back away from the weapons systems he'd been about to respond with. A moment later the Buzzard powered up and flew right over top of them, close enough that it rattled the Ghost with its passing, leaving their windscreen covered in an opaque and swirling cloud of engine gases for a moment. By the time it had cleared the Buzzard was gone, both from their line of sight and from Finn's sensors.

“I don't like him,” Finn decided.

“No, but he brought us valuable information,” Ren said, leaning against the sensors array next to him, trying to think. “General Parnadee was in charge of ground forces; Admiral Pryde was Hux's second in command. If he's had to move on to Griss, and they've also both had their ships crippled at the same time, he'll be scrambling to cobble together a command that can simultaneously operate as many units as he's got under him now, much less lead them in an assault. THAT'S what you should be telling Poe,” he added, glancing at Finn. “It's a lucky break for the Resistance that the Knights have been so busy, and that Hux was so ill-prepared to overthrow me that the Knights had this much opportunity to run rampant in the first place.”

“I agree with Finn,” Rose put in. “Kuruk's creepy.”

“He projects fear in the Force. It's worse the closer you get to him. Be glad we had the two ships to separate us,” Ben said. “But this means we can't waste any more time getting to Otomok. Chewie, take the starboard shipping route to Port Addis, it's more direct than the rear lane. If Hux is having trouble shoring up his command there's no better time to splinter the First Order into factions but we have a very narrow window to really cause him trouble.”

“And what will we do after we've landed on Hays Major?” Finn challenged.

“Henchbrao Base is the main First Order headquarters for the system. If we can take that we'll control Otomok, and we'll have not only the stormtroopers and all the trainees on base, but all the blockade's ships as well. It's as good a start as we'll get anywhere else.”

“Plus it ends the blockade on Otomok,” Rose put in. “The people on Hays Major probably haven't even seen the sun in years; this will finally give them a chance to take their home back.”

“It's a start,” Ren repeated, turning away, not sure how to tell her that his portion of the First Order would need ore, too. His plans for reforming the organization hinged on the First Order already being his completely, not just in part; without being able to lean on that he didn't know how he could take it over piece by piece and still reform it at the same time. It was probably a little early on to pretend he was anyone's savior, much less the savior of a system the First Order had already half destroyed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Original tumblr A/N: Kuruk and the Night Buzzard are both canon as of the most recent Kylo Ren comic. I had to bring the Knights in at some point, especially given how few allies Ren has left at the moment, and I’m relieved to at least have something to start with but, again, very little is canon and this story is going to go where it goes.
> 
> My tumblr:
> 
> https://how-do-i-turn-this-thing-off.tumblr.com/


	42. A discovery on the Ghost

Poe was pleased to hear that Hux might already be in trouble, a little less pleased with how Finn had found out about it. “Yeah, I've heard of the Knights,” he said, his voice sounding tinny over comms as Finn made his final report before the Ghost got much closer to Otomok and had to go to radio silence for the foreseeable future. “Even thought about recruiting them, once.”

“Recruiting the Knights?” Ren repeated incredulously.

“Hey, I said 'once', didn't I?” Poe pointed out irritably. “But if the First Order's gone ground-blind it might be a good chance for us to spread out our feelers a bit more, really start shoring up the holes in our ranks. You know where the Knights are going to go after them next?”

“Even if I did I wouldn't tell you,” Ren replied. “Better to just stay out of their way and come in to pick over the wreckage after they're gone.”

“He's gone full cryptic on this one,” Finn contributed in an aggrieved tone, eyeing Ren. “I'd say we should look into these Knights, if we had the time.”

“Well, we don't. Give us a heads up as soon as the Ghost is on her way back, and don't take your time about it, I want you home and in one piece before we have to make up our minds about anything. Does Rose have any news about those blasters?”

“Hi, Poe, I'm here,” Rose called out, a little breathlessly as she climbed the galley steps and trotted through the crew quarters to the cockpit. “They're all operational, but at least one third of them are still giving off a different signature than normal First Order blasters. I think it might be something new they did with the core.”

“But they're still good to shoot?”

“They're still good to shoot.”

“Sarge'll be glad to hear it, I've had him stuck mostly on the old Rebel blasters until you were sure. Anything else I should know?”

“Just that we're going in with a half-baked disgrace for a plan, no backup, and probably no escape hatch if anything goes wrong,” Finn contributed sarcastically. “Right now our blasters working is the only thing we've got going for us.”

“Sounds pretty standard. I'll wait on your call. Dameron out.”

“Yeah, he'll be waiting a while,” Finn muttered as Poe cut out and static filled the connection, switching off their end of comms. He was sitting in the pilots chair for the moment while Chewie got some last-minute rack before they really got into the weeds. Ren said in the copilots seat, reviewing everything he could find about Henchbrao Base. “I still can't figure out how you think you're going to get us in,” Finn said, looking over at Ren's holofeed.

“If the First Order is controlling the ore mines then they'll have lots of guys going back and forth all the time, and that means people are going in and out all the time,” Rose pointed out. “That helps us, right?”

“Yeah, if those people don't spot us and turn us into a blasted-up pile of bantha fodder.”

“They won't, Finn. We have the Force on our side,” she added, smiling at Ren.

“Once we get in the main goal is to separate the officers from the foot soldiers and go through them one by one,” Ren contributed. “I'll be able to tell which ones are worth keeping. As long as Henchbrao maintains control of the blockade fleet it shouldn't be too complicated to get hold of the operation.”

“Uh-huh. Looks like we're starting to catch up to the locals,” Finn said, gesturing with one hand to a couple of freighters also traveling at sublight speeds in front of them that seemed to be heading into the Otomok System and, beyond them, the faint, ghostly light that now seemed like a dim star but that the maps identified as Hays Major.

“Business must be good,” Ren observed, scanning the freighters. “Have they seen us?”

“No, and they're not going to,” Finn said, easing off the thrusters to keep them well back. “We'll stay at the edge of their wake and maybe if the First Order picks up anything from us they'll think it's just trade route debris. How close are we to approaching the blockade?”

“Less than an hour,” Ren decided. “Less than that usually, but if you're keeping us at this speed maybe fifty minutes?”

“Let's hope the Ghost is as good at not being spotted as Poe thinks she is,” Finn muttered, his eyes darting back and forth across the screens in front of him.

“I've taken a look at her systems and she should be more than that good, and a whole lot better than any other Resistance ships I've seen, even the scout ships,” Rose reassured him. “I had to give the left dampener an emergency patch job, though, so go easy on your turns or you might blow her out.”

“And then what?” Finn demanded, his hands tightening on the controls.

“And then we won't be able to disguise half our port side and I'll have to try and max the fields protecting the fixed-hull anti-concussors to compensate and that might tear a hole in the secondary gunner lines and set us on fire?”

“Great, that sounds really great, why didn't anyone tell me this?!”

“Easy,” Ren muttered.

“Don't you tell me to go easy, Solo!” Finn snapped, whipping around and narrowing his eyes at Ren as, in the viewscreen, Hays Major came closer and closer. “This whole thing was your dumb idea in the first place! No, it's not even a whole idea, it's half an idea. It's barely one slice of bread in an idea sandwich! And you're going to get us killed just to figure out that we shouldn't even have been out here at all!”

Ren stared at him for a moment, not sure what to do with this odd display of what felt like something between anxiety and gallows humor. Out of the corner of his eye he could see Rose staring at him in turn, no doubt willing him not to do or say anything that would set Finn off. “You seem stressed,” Ren observed anyway.

“I? Seem? Stressed?!” Finn wheezed, then demanding, “What'd he say?” behind him in response to Chewie growling something as he climbed out of his bunk.

“He's warning you that our shields can't cover all ambient sound and that if you keep screeching we might get picked up on First Order sensors,” Rose whispered.

“I'm not screech-- oh, fine,” Finn said, letting go of the controls and throwing his hands in the air. “Let the Wookie take it, we're nearly there anyway. You--,” he said, jabbing a finger in Ren's direction, then jerking a thumb toward the crew quarters, “cargo bay, now.”

“Why?” Ren asked, bemused as Finn got to his feet.

“Because you said I could hit you if I wanted to and it'll make me feel better.”

“Right now?”

“Chewie can probably navigate a blockade with his eyes shut, and you sitting here being mysterious isn't going to do more good than Rose sitting here instead telling him that if he turns too hard to the left we'll all die in a fiery explosion.”

“Only maybe,” Rose protested but Ren sighed, getting to his feet. That was all Finn needed to see before he led the way to the cargo bay, stomping a little more quietly that usual, his head tilted slightly to the side as though he could hear through the hull of the ship to First Order scanners beyond. Ren followed, studying him in the Force, unable to tell if he was actually about to get hit or not. Finn was such a roil of emotions that it was impossible to guess which would take precedence at any given moment. If Ren had to give it a Force term to it he would have called Finn unbalanced.

“We're not really doing this, are we?” Ren asked as the airlock hissed shut behind them.

“I don't know,” Finn said, pacing across the tiny cargo bay then back again. “It would make me feel better. I don't know how much better. But you're still beat up from last time,” he added, gesturing at Ren's face. Ren didn't respond to that, not particularly needing the reminder-- the refresher mirror wasn't very big but it was big enough to clearly make out the confectioner's delight of colors ranging across his face, and the particularly impressive bruise directly over his left eye that still started aching if he frowned for too long. “What if I only hit you once?” Finn speculated, stopping in front of him. “Just between friends.”

“Well do it, then,” Ren said, starting to feel a little irritable himself. This whole farce was idiotic, to say nothing of a waste of time, and he remained extremely unconvinced that it was more worthwhile to be down here than up in the cockpit while Chewie and Rose ran the Otomok Blockade unaided. Finn hesitated, stepping toward him, then stepping back, returning to his pacing.

“It's Rose,” he said abruptly, wheeling back toward Ren. “Well, it's Rose partly. But she was never supposed to be here, you know? When I volunteered I didn't think she'd be here.”

“Rose won't be in any more danger than the rest of us.”

“But you know, you KNOW that's not true,” Finn hissed, just barely managing to keep his voice down as he glanced at the ceiling then back to Ren. “What if she sees someone she recognizes, huh? Not even one of her parents, a cousin or- or a friend-.”

“We won't be in the mines that long, Finn,” Ren said, reaching out in the Force to him, trying to examine his feelings a little more closely. “She's not likely to meet a whole lot of friends once we've gotten into the base.”

“Assuming we even make it that far,” Finn pointed out, rubbing both hands over his hair as he squeezed his eyes shut, his forehead shining with sweat. Ren reached for his emotions more insistently and felt an odd movement in the Force, as though he'd brushed against some sort of reflex action that had shivered in response to his touch. At the same time Finn twitched, absentmindedly waving one hand past his ear as though to shoo away an insect that had gotten too close. Ren froze, his probe snapping back to him in astonishment.

“If she dies-- if she dies I don't know what I'll do, you know?” Finn said, opening his eyes and looking at Ren almost pleadingly.

“Yes,” Ren agreed automatically, wanting to try to move in the Force again, not sure if what he thought he'd seen could even be possible.

“I mean, if it was Rey, you know, for you, and you were both in danger and you thought she might die--.”

“I know what you mean, Finn, you don't have to describe it to me,” Ren snapped, also just remembering to keep his voice down at the last minute. “I've thought Rey was going to die before, and you saw what that was like.”

“I don't know what I'd do,” Finn repeated, looking down at his feet, his whole body seeming to cave inwards slightly as though he'd like nothing more than to just sink into the floor and vanish. Something in Ren wanted to be sympathetic, or to try and think up a reassurance or two that might be appropriate, but something else, something bigger and much more insistent, led him to instead try a sudden Force push at Finn's right side. He didn't move at all except in the Force and stopped the blow the moment before it landed but the very next moment Finn suddenly jumped, looking to the right then at Ren, accusation and amazement exactly equal in his expression.

“Did you just... did you just try to hit me?” he demanded.

“It was only a feint.”

“I'm over here having a MOMENT, Solo. I'm practically dying right now and you're going to wind up and hit me?!”

“Volume,” Ren cautioned, and in unison they both glanced up at the ceiling for a moment then back down. “How long have you known?” Ren asked.

“Known what?”

“How long have you known that you have a connection to the Force?”

If Ren really had hit him Finn couldn't have possibly been more stunned. He stared at Ren across the meter gap between then like he was trying to make something out a long, long way off. “You can tell?” he finally asked. “I mean-- I mean, since meeting you, I guess. I felt you coming, when you showed up in that cave when Rey was injured. I thought I was feeling her, because you felt so much like her at the time, but then you were there and I realized it was you. I thought I might be, you know, something, before that, but I can't really remember if I felt Rey or not, when I met her. We just kind of stumbled into each other and when she was a scavenger, and living on Jakku, even she didn't know what she was so obviously I didn't wonder about, you know, anything like that.”

The words seemed to leave him in a rush, as though he'd let a floodgate loose, and when he was done he looked away, almost physically stumbling with the relief of having said it. “I didn't see it, before,” Ren replied, answering his initial question. “I fought you on Starkiller and didn't sense anything then, so it must have been dormant. Or Rey was distracting me.” He sighed, shaking his head. “This is a really, really bad time for this.”

“I mean, it could help us, right?” Finn suggested. “It could be good, you know, to have another- to have a- to be able to at least feel things, I guess.”

“And is that what you can do? 'Feel things'?”

“Well, and my shots have gotten better. Accuracy, you know. At least I think they have.”

Ren nodded briefly, turning away so he could try to think, feeling Finn's expectant, almost eager gaze on his back like twin laser sights. There was no way to know how much of the living Force he could use, if any, or what he would be able to do with it even if he could use it. And right now, on the very edge of getting to Hays and starting the climb back into First Order High Command, any experimentation could be disastrous.

“You need to learn to control your emotions,” Ren said, facing Finn again. “They're all over the place as it is, but if you're not paying attention and they boil over you could lash out.”

“Okay, good. Good," Finn said, nodding along. "So is this, like, course one? Beginner level, intro to the Force kind of thing?”

“No.” Depending on how strong in the Force Finn turned out to be this could land them anywhere between remedial training and giving a toddler the user's manual to a TIE Fighter. “For now just breathe. Concentrate on what you feel. Don't fight it. Let it flow through you.”

Finn nodded and got through exactly a breath and a half before he demanded, “Wait, where are you going?”

“Back to the cockpit,” Ren replied, already halfway up the galley stair. “I need to let Chewie and Rose know not to bother us until we land on Hays.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Original tumblr A/N: depending on which rumors you believe about the cut footage from TROS/what Finn was trying to tell Rey the whole movie, him being a Force user may or may not be canon. I hope that he is, but really for the sake of my own fics and not so much whatever they do with the character going forward
> 
> My tumblr:
> 
> https://how-do-i-turn-this-thing-off.tumblr.com/


	43. The third moon of Lok

“It's not the most attractive camp we've ever had, but it's well out of the way of the First Order,” Leia said, straightening up from some cargo she’d been unpacking with a sigh as R2 rolled past her, beeping speculatively as he scanned their surroundings. “Even among the locals the third moon of Lok is more myth than reality. You can never tell which maps it'll show up on and which ones will leave it out.”

“I wonder why,” Rey said only half jokingly, glancing around herself as she finished staking the leading edge of their tent. From orbit the surface of the moon had looked pockmarked, dotted here and there with sinkholes; only once the Falcon had gotten close enough to start its landing approach over one of those sinkholes had Rey realized the entire dusty upper crust of the planet was hollow, connected to the second surface down below by long, rounded, undulating stone bridges, some of which had sides that had partially crumbled over time to reveal dozens of pipe-like pathways the size of her fist, continuing up to the crust and down into the ground they stood on. Where they led or how they'd been formed she couldn't guess but whenever a breeze from the surface managed to find its way through them they made an eerie flute-like sound, so light and breathy it could almost be mistaken for discordant music being heard from a long way off.

“Well at least we have very few neighbors,” Leia said, sitting on a crate and reading her datapad. “The only significant native species is a type of frog that releases a noxious gas when threatened. Nothing fatal, but startle enough frogs at the same time and they'll probably be able to make you extremely dizzy. They eat sand mites and some small crustaceans that live in the local algae so there must be water of some kind down here, which I'm glad to see since the Falcon's supply plus what we've brought wouldn't last us very long if we couldn't at least replenish that. There's nothing flammable in the area, so once we've set up the furnace we'll have to hope that our extra fuel cells will hold out for what we need.”

“Maybe we should set it up a little way from camp,” Rey suggested, wiping her forehead as she staked down a couple more lead lines. “It's already as hot as a Jakku morning down here.”

“Yes, I don't think we'll need the extra heat,” Leia agreed with a smile, “but it's all the more reason we'll need the extra water. If we absolutely have to we can do a supply run to Lok, though I'd rather not; it's one of the less friendly Outer Rim dens.”

“How long do you think we'll be here?” Rey asked.

“That depends on you, dear. How do you feel?”

“Good. Rested. I've been resting for more than a week now, I'm starting to almost feel TOO rested,” Rey joked, watching R2 pass her on his way back to the Falcon, beeping something about starting his maintenance cycle.

“But how do you feel in the Force?” Leia asked, putting down her datapad and studying Rey.

“Still a little unsteady,” Rey said honestly as she turned back to her lead lines, unable to avoid a shadow of doubt when she considered the many hours of mediation that she'd wasted over and over again trying to deal with a problem she couldn't see and could barely even feel most of the time. “But if I use the bond I can push past it, enough to use the Force almost as much as before.”

“I don't know if it will be more or less difficult to work with a Kyber crystal that's already refined, but it's the only one the Resistance has been able to get our hands on so far and we don't have much more time to waste,” Leia said with a sigh, her eyes straying to the smaller, double-bound duracrete case sitting on top of the folding table next to her. Rey could feel a palpable energy from it in the Force, almost as if something living was inside, something living that didn't like her very much. “Do you have a hilt design in mind?” Leia asked, turning back towards her.

“I'll put something together,” Rey replied, also tearing her gaze away from the case. “Rose made sure I have double of everything I might need, just in case. As long as I can get the blade to focus properly the rest should be just... grip and button,” she said with a shrug.

“It doesn't need to win any beauty awards, that's for certain,” Leia agreed, looking slightly reassured. “Even the lightsabers I've seen from the Old Republic were usually more form than function.” She sighed, looking around and back towards the Falcon, then looking around more closely. “I don't suppose there's any point in wondering where my apprentice has gone?” she said out loud as though addressing the moon itself.

“I thought he was still on the Falcon,” Rey said, turning and reaching for the ship in her mind. She found it empty except for R2, the feeling of Ammu and Ani already going stale and cold.

“I'm willing to take wagers on them immediately startling the biggest nest of moon frogs they can find,” Leia sighed. “Rey, would you mind trying to find them? I'll finish setting up, but I'm a little too tired to go haring about under the surface today.”

“Sure,” Rey said, putting down the cot she'd been about to unfold and wiping her forehead again as she grabbed her staff. Even with the occasional breeze the underside of the surface was stifling and she had been sweating freely since they'd stepped out of the Falcon. She smiled ruefully, shaking her head at herself; she'd been gone from Jakku for too long, if this tiny bit of heat could make her sweat.

“You better watch out for the frogs too, I don't want you stumbling about and twisting an ankle,” Leia called after her as she left. Rey waved her staff to acknowledge that she'd heard, glancing up as she passed under an opening to the surface. Lok and one of its other moons were just visible in the daytime sky, the planet the color of rust and the other moon- or the crescent she could see of it- white and shimmering in the heat. The length of the sinkhole was the size of a large freighter and took a while to cross the patch of sunlight, long enough that when she stepped back into the shadow she had to slow for a moment to let her eyes to adjust.

Everything seemed to be stone around her. The crust up above, the strange connecting pipes leading up and down, the ground she walked on, it was all gritty, undulating stone, as if the wind had hollowed out the underside of the crust itself breeze by breeze. She followed her senses downward where she found her first patch of green; a very small and shallow pool of brackish water, lying in the middle of what looked like a plate of algae, starting to go brown and crisp on the edges where the water had forsaken it. Rey couldn't see any moon frogs as she passed but since nothing shot noxious gas at her she assumed this pool was too tiny to attract any. She wished now that she had asked Leia what they looked like, since even knowing their color or approximate size would be useful.

As she followed her sense of Ammu and Ani her path very gently continued downward; or rather, the space in between the stone bridges leading upward grew deeper and deeper. Now she was sometimes walking across entire carpets of algae that had long-since dried and turned to dust, and occasionally glimpsed deeper and deeper pools too far away to investigate properly. She was at least close enough to finally spot some moon frogs, just slightly smaller than the palm of her hand and lightly colored, but they were too far away for her to make out anything other than that. Then she rounded a corner and found herself facing the largest pool she'd seen so far, sitting directly in the middle of a veritable lawn of algae, the edge crowded with frogs.

“Shh,” someone cautioned near her feet, and she looked over and down to see Ammu crouching on the edge of the algae a little to her left, Ani curled up meditatively next to him. Even as Ammu shushed her a few frogs slid into the water and Ammu motioned for her to step back. “I think it's the moss,” he whispered, pointing to where she was standing. “They can feel you when you're on the moss. But they don't mind if you stay on the rock.”

“It's algae. And Leia was worried about you,” Rey whispered back, retreating to the bare stone. The frogs stopped going into the water but still seemed to eye her suspiciously, their pupils slitted sideways.

Ammu shrugged, accepting both of those facts. “Are you going exploring later?”

“No, we still have to set up camp, and I need to work on my new crystal,” Rey said, edging over to him and crouching the same way he had.

“This is the first new planet I've ever been to,” he said in a tone of reproach.

“Yes, I guess it would be,” Rey said, feeling a little guilty. To Ammu this probably wasn't the most interesting mission in the whole world that he could be on. “Maybe we can explore later. Leia wants us to find clean water, if we can.”

“I could find clean water,” Ammu said, perking up a bit. “Ani can smell it, can't you Ani?” Ani made a placid sound that in the Force that seemed to indicate he could. Rey smiled, looking out at the water. Now that the frogs had stopped running away from her she could see them more clearly and that their skin was not just white but had a strong pearlescent shine to it, under which they had faint colored markings; some of them pink, some a very light blue, some almost purple. They seemed to glow against the dark water and the green algae, nearly completely obscuring the reddish baby frogs that hid under their parents, sitting partially in and out of the water.

“They're pretty, huh?” Ammu said, also looking at the frogs.

“Very pretty,” Rey agreed. “Do you like frogs?”

“Yes. I used to pet the ones on Canfre, when they'd let me get close. Ani says I can't get close to these ones though, because they'd put me to sleep.”

“How does Ani know that?”

“He ate one. Akk dogs eat frogs all the time, but he doesn't like these ones as much. I think he could eat them but they don't really taste good.” Ammu sighed, looking down at his feet. “Master Skywalker says you have to do something very important here and I can't bother you because you need to concentrate.”

“Well, I'm not doing the thing yet. I'm making a new lightsaber.” Ammu's head popped back up, his eyes open wide as he stared at her, and Rey grinned. “Do you want to help me design the hilt?”

“Can I?” he asked eagerly, starting to his feet, Ani getting up a beat behind. “Can we do it now?”

“Well I don't know about right now--,” Rey hedged as she also stood, stopping mid-sentence as Ani licked her hand in a slobbery but affectionate way, not having to lift his head to do it. When she'd first met the pup his head had come up to just above her knee, but now it was level with her hip.

“He's growing,” Ammu commented, noticing as she stared at the pup. “That's why he's so grouchy, it makes him sore.”

“How old is he?”

“Not very old. He's not even halfway done. What color do you think your saber will be?” he asked, starting back the way the camp was.

“I don't know. I don't think you find out until you're done,” Rey said, following. Behind them Ani made a playful lunge for two moon frogs that hadn't yet gone into the water; for a moment they seemed to swell up in alarm, then disappeared abruptly in a cloud of white gasses. The gas didn't spread very far but the smell hit Rey and Ammu at the same time; Rey covered her nose and mouth, her eyes immediately watering.

“Phew!” Ammu said, waving a hand in front of his face and trotting away from the pond much more quickly. “Ani, bad akk!” Ani shook his head, running past them, mouth open and tongue lolling out as he made a 'krik-krik-krik' noise that in akk Force speech sounded like laughter. Even with both hands clamped over half her face Rey couldn't help but smile watching Ammu and Ani start an impromptu game, chasing each other back and forth on their way up to the path. Ammu was usually so serious and so absorbed in his own thoughts that watching him laugh and play was a relief, almost as much as him having Ani to play with in the first place. At least if she and Leia were too distracted by the Kyber crystal to have much time to spare for Ammu he wouldn't be totally alone.

Ammu turned back up the path, passing through another sinkhole's-worth of light, his skin going from dark to medium green and back again, the sun shining against his black hair as he titled his head towards Ani as though listening. “Ani says there's better water that way,” he reported, pointing somewhere vaguely to the right as he looked over his shoulder at Rey. She nodded to show she understood and he slowed down, examining her. “What will you do with your new lightsaber when you have one?”

“Fight in the war,” she said. “Protect my friends.”

He considered this, his dark eyes gone serious again. Ani tried to get him to play but Ammu shooed him away and Ani gamboled off somewhere else. “Does making a lightsaber take a long time?”

“It can,” Rey admitted.

“How long?” he asked as they passed another sinkhole. Rey glanced up at Lok and one of it's other moons, faint in the blue daytime sky. There was so much galaxy out there she still hadn't seen yet, so much she knew nothing about, and it was waiting for her. It was counting on her.

“Not that long,” she replied, looking back down at the path as they passed into shadow, hoping it was true.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> At the risk of sounding repetitive, thank you so much for all the love you've been leaving on my work! You're the reader-- it's all for you :) And I'm glad you're enjoying this journey and my interpretation of the characters, their feelings, their fears, and their hopes, as much as I am.


	44. A glimpse of the truth

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> And more than one truth, at that

“You didn't tell me how hard this was,” Finn growled, eyes squeezed shut, forehead beaded with sweat.

“Concentrate.”

“I am concentrating!”

“Concentrate harder,” Ren advised grimly, holding his own temper in check, trying to focus on his feeling of Finn in the Force as they sat facing each other in the first form meditation pose, legs crossed, hands on their knees. By now they must have passed through the blockade, and since no one had come barreling into the cargo bay to report disaster he could only assume it had gone well. The situation with Finn, however, was not going well at all.

“My emotions are all about Hays,” Finn muttered. “And Rose. And what happens if we lose.”

“Name them.”

“Frustration,” Finn said, breathing out. “Panic. Fear. Um... helplessness. Fear-- again.”

“What do you fear most? Besides one of us getting hurt.”

“Failing. Or-- or doing more damage. Hurting the people we meet. Making things worse.”

“Finn, your fear is part of you,” Ren told, searching him in the Force. Finn shifted uncomfortably. “You need to accept that it exists, that it always will. Don't try to ignore it or push it away, that only gives it power over you.”

“It feels pretty damn powerful already,” he complained.

“If it is there it is there for a reason.” Finn nodded and Ren, feeling no change in his instability, tried a different approach. “You said that you feel things. What kinds of things? When do you feel them?”

“Um, sometimes... if something bad happens. Or is going to happen. Or something good even,” he muttered, his voice going lower, his feelings flushing slightly with embarrassment. “But it's hard to tell what it will be.”

Ren frowned, reaching further into Finn. “What do you feel now?”

“Fear,” Finn repeated in an increasingly strained tone. “Helplessness, frustra--.”

“No, not in your feelings, in the Force. Feel forward, like... like pushing your mind into the world around you. Outside of yourself.”

Finn frowned too, sweating more, but Ren could feel him struggling to obey. The Force moved, slightly, swelling, as though trying to respond to something. “I feel...” Finn frowned harder, pushed harder. “Danger,” he breathed, his expression not relaxing but something in his voice going cooler, more distant. “Danger in front of us.”

He was doing it. The living Force was beginning to respond to him, drawn in like water towards a sudden leak, soaking through, more falling into him than being pulled, connecting with a natural portion of its own whole. “Name the danger,” Ren said softly, afraid to disturb him too much. “A place? An event?”

“A person,” Finn breathed, his shoulders relaxing, his forehead beginning to smooth as the Force flooded him, lifting him away from his emotions, elevating him out of the roiling cloud in his mind that had been antagonizing and exhausting him. A portion of his fear seemed to ease. “A person down there.”

“On Hays?”

“Yes.”

Ren hesitated, fingers tensing slightly on his knees. He needed to know more but simultaneously needed Finn to go deeper into this state he seemed to have found purely by accident and achieve at least enough balance to see them through the next few hours. “What is the... shape of the threat?” he asked. “Feel it. Don't think, relax. Let it come to you.”

“It's...” Finn hesitated for a long moment, his connection stuttering for a second but not being disrupted enough for him to lose it. “It's a... man. But I can't see--.”

“Just the shape, Finn,” Ren repeated hurriedly, feeling the connection stutter more severely. “Just the outline.”

“Big,” Finn muttered. “Big and... and white.”

“Good. Focus on the white. Does it seem like skin or clothing? Is it hard, or soft?”

“No. Not soft.”

“Relax. Take a deep breath and let it flood your mind.”

Finn did as he was told, and the connection settled within him again. “Hard. Shiny. Armor,” he said in surprise, his eyes opening, and the connection quietly fragmented and was gone. “It's stormtrooper armor. I could see it. I could see it in my mind.”

“Yes, you did very well,” Ren said, still monitoring him in the Force. It seemed to have been enough. “You feel steadier too.”

“Yeah. Yeah, it's better. It all kind of fell away, you know? Like I wasn't even here for a second.”

“So I've heard,” Ren said briefly, uncrossing his legs and getting to his feet, stretching out for a moment. “We're nearly to the planet. Can you feel that?”

“No. Not right now, not anymore,” Finn said, frowning as he also got to his feet.

“It's fine, Finn. It'll come.”

“Well, thanks anyway,” he said, looking down, clasping his hands, feet shoulder-width apart; adopting, though he didn't seem to know it, the stance of a First Order soldier at parade rest. “I know I can't exactly do the stuff that you and Rey do--.”

“If you could I wouldn't let you off this ship. The untrained Force user is more a liability to himself and others than an asset.” Ren sighed, shaking his head. “Use your feelings today, but don't try to do any more than that unless you don't have another choice. Follow where they lead, don't push to make it happen.”

“Okay,” Finn said, nodding.

Ren hesitated, looking toward the cockpit as the Ghost began to slow. In other circumstances he still wouldn't let Finn off the ship, other circumstances in which he had more people and resources at his disposal. Today, however, he didn't really have a choice in the matter. “Focus your attention on the stormtrooper you felt. When you find him, tell me.”

“You won't be able to feel him?” Finn asked, looking up in surprise.

“Maybe, but not in the way you will. The Force is showing you something it hasn't shown me.” For a moment Finn regarded him warily, as though looking for some sign of envy or hostility in response to this supposed preference, and Ren sighed. “I can still blow this whole ship apart with a thought, Finn,” he reminded him. “You're allowed a little Force sight.”

Finn grinned. “Cocky bastard, aren't you?” Ren turned away, opening the airlock just as Finn said, “Thank you, Master Solo.” The name- the title- hearing both at once made him stumble mid-step, turning back, but Finn was still standing at parade rest, still grinning.

“I'm not your Master,” was all he could think to say.

“Well you're the only Master I've got,” Finn said, shrugging. Around them the Ghost slowed even more then shuddered slightly as it made contact with something solid. Both Ren and Finn compensated automatically, maintaining their footing. “We've docked,” Finn pointed out.

“Just Solo is fine,” Ren replied, ignoring that.

“Whatever you say, not-Master Solo.”

“I hope you have as much energy for the fight in front of us as you do for making pointless jokes,” Ren said, turning away again and continuing up the galley stair, but he did still feel somewhat better about this mission than he had only hours before, enough that even the dismal sight of the rusty and derelict docking bay through the viewscreen hardly effected him as he crossed the crew quarters and entered the cockpit, looking out at the murky space hangar.

“You guys okay?” Rose asked, looking back at him and seeming to closely examine his face-- for new cuts and bruises, he realized.

“We're fine,” he said briefly. “How did running the blockade go?” Chewie replied that it had been smooth and uneventful, and had several complimentary things to say about the Ghost and her stealth capabilities. “Good, fine,” Ren replied. “Chewie, I need you to stay with the ship, we can't sneak into a First Order base with a Wookie in tow.” Chewie made a sound that roughly indicated he'd expected that. “Before we leave, you should both know that Finn has a connection to the Force.”

“Wha-- whoa, whoa!” Finn protested, his glance switching between Ren and Rose then back again, Rose staring back at him as though Ren had just revealed Finn was secretly a bantha in disguise. “Solo that's private!”

“Secrets in battle get people killed,” Ren said unsympathetically, relieved nonetheless to hear that they were back to just 'Solo' again. “I've worked with him and he's got a lid on it,” he informed the other two. “Other than that, we're going ahead as scheduled. Let's get dressed; Chewie, pay off whoever or whatever you need to to cover the docking fee and make sure no one looks at the Ghost too closely.”

“You-- you're strong in the Force? You are?” Rose asked without moving to get up, seemingly not hearing a word Ren had said after that.

“Well-- well, yeah,” Finn said, smiling hesitantly. “I mean it's not, like, a crazy strong connection or anything, like him,” he added, nodding at Ren, “but yeah, I guess I am.”

“Finn, that's amazing!” Rose said, finally getting to her feet and throwing herself into his arms, Finn catching her automatically. “That's so amazing, how, how did you find out? What does it feel like? What can you do?” Ren turned away, hearing Chewie growl under his breath something that sounded a whole lot like Wookie for 'not another one', but Finn had eyes only for Rose, excitedly explaining about the feelings, about meditating with Ren, about his vision of the stormtrooper armor. The recitation, as rushed as it was, still gave Ren enough time to wrap more nondescript clothing around himself over his normal clothes, draped and trailing to hide his general size and shape, along with a face wrap that not only obscured his identity but also the colorful and eye-catching bruises Finn had been kind enough to decorate him with. By the time he returned to the cockpit he was ready to disembark and Chewie had similarly been busy, successfully paying off the dock authorities then returning, but Finn and Rose were still wrapped in each other's arms.

“Enough of this,” Ren said, waving his hand impatiently and inserting a light but insistent Force push directly between them, making them come apart. “We're here, we need to get moving. Go get dressed.”

“You've been teaching him?” Rose asked, turning towards Ren instead as Finn just stood where the Force push had left him, beaming, neither of them seeming to particularly mind their forcible removal from each other's embrace.

“I'm been trying to make sure he doesn't blow us halfway to the Unknown Regions, if at all possible, and only for the last hour or so,” he corrected, but even that stark assessment of his role in all this was not enough to keep her from also throwing her arms around him. He patted her back awkwardly, made more uncomfortable by his sense of her feelings of surprise and gratitude and trust that seemed also to wrap around him than by the actual hug.

“I tried calling him 'Master',” Finn informed her. “He really doesn't like it very much.”

“I think it sounds nice,” Rose said, grinning up at Ren.

“It’s inaccurate,” Ren said, pushing her away from him too, but a little more gently this time and with his hands. “Both of you get dressed. Please.” This time they finally moved away towards quarters but not before Rose gave him another dazzling, ear-to-ear smile, taking Finn's hand like they were lovers about to visit a temperate beach rather than soldiers about to embark on an extremely perilous mission. Ren turned back to the cockpit, where Chewie was watching him and looking pleased, as much as a Wookie could make any expression other than general extreme hairiness.

“Don't start,” Ren sighed, sitting in the copilot chair and pulling out his holocron one last time. Chewie looked away too, fiddling with some of the controls, but remarked that Finn seemed like he would make a good student. “A good student for Rey, when he gets back to her,” Ren corrected, trying to ignore the slight sinking sensation of disappointment in his own emotions as he said it. Because for all that Finn did seem to have some natural talent, for all that he had been able to access and even somewhat use the living Force, Ren had watched him as closely as he could during their short exercise together and never, not once, had Finn tried consciously or unconsciously to reach for any part of the Dark side.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Master Solo. Honestly, it’s fun even just to type it.


	45. A sky-sighted people

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ren, Rose, and Finn make their way through Port Addis

Port Addis had probably been a booming center of trade once, but it had retained few hallmarks of success and industry. Today those hallmarks crumbled like monuments to a time long past, half-collapsed space hangars sitting abandoned and towering multi-level market centers listing slightly to one side or the other as though in the absence of their clients they no longer felt any need even to stand up straight. The few children in the streets seemed to be petty thieves and cut-purses without exception, painfully thin and whiplash quick, darting in and out of the traders and First Order soldiers with the predatory single-mindedness of those searching for easy marks. Ren gently tried to turn the children's attention from himself, Rose, and Finn as they went, keeping an eye on the others they passed, but no one gave them a second glance. Ren had briefly worried that their face coverings would mark them out as suspicious off-worlders, but in Port Addis such clothing additions turned out to be the norm, every local heavily swaddled in masks and the wealthier citizens in lensed rebreathers. It was easy to see why; even the air directly in front of them was oily and murky, and though Hays Major was marked down in their datapads as an ice planet the few drifted piles of snow they passed were so dirty they could almost universally be mistaken for mud or trash.

“It looks worse than Hays Minor,” Rose muttered under her breath as they made their way through, eyeing their surroundings unhappily. “Or maybe Hays Minor did look like this, after Paige and I left, or I don't remember how bad it was.”

“Stay focused,” Ren replied, in a way he hoped was firm but not entirely unsympathetic, leading them a few blocks further down the main intake before ducking onto a side street then into the lee of a closed and tightly shuttered building, checking his surroundings before pulling out his datapad. It was First Order tech and more likely than anything else to attract unwelcome attention but the building provided shelter from one direction and their own bodies blocked the view from any other angle.

“Henchbrao Base is between us and the main ore shaft,” he muttered, pulling up the map and showing Finn and Rose. “The western side of Port Addis is where the mine bosses live, but they have to travel around the base daily to get to the mines. The stormtroopers assigned to oversee the mines have a fortified entrance from there, where the old Henchbrao city used to be. It's been evacuated for years now and at least half of it has already slid into the mine sinkholes, but it's the easiest way in without being detected.”

“So we wait out the night and leave with the mine bosses in the morning?” Finn asked.

“We won't have to, mine shifts run around the clock, morning to night without stopping, ever,” Rose said quietly, her eyes downcast above the wrap that covered every other part of her face. “The hand-off should be at about sundown. If we get in among the bosses then, the First Order won't notice us.”

“And if the bosses notice us?” Finn asked, glancing at her. “If we tell them we're with the Resistance, will they go for that?”

“Some of them, maybe,” Rose said, shrugging under her voluminous, shapeless robe. “Sometimes people don't want to take the chance, no matter how bad it's gotten. Especially after what happened to Hays Minor.”

“We should keep it to ourselves regardless, or as long as we possibly can,” Ren cautioned them, tapping on the screen of the datapad to shut down the display. “The western portion of Port Addis is the poorer side so stay in easy reach of each other and be careful. If we're mistaken for someone worth either robbing or reporting we'll have trouble on our hands. Heads down, weapons close.”

“Nothing will happen,” Finn said in a reassuring tone, and for a moment Ren thought he was talking to himself then he realized Finn's eyes were slanted toward Rose.

“I know,” she said, but her eyes were still fixed on the ground.

“If this is going to be a problem for you--,” Ren began.

“It won't.”

“Tell me,” he finished anyway, leaning over and finding her hand under her robes, clasping it. “Tell me, Rose.”

“I know,” she said, but still didn't look at him. “I will.” Ren glanced over at Finn and Finn nodded back-- Finn would keep an eye on it too. Still, it was with significant misgivings that Ren stowed his datapad and turned back down the street, trying to ignore the doubt in the back of his mind. They shouldn't even have brought Rose. He knew it, Finn knew it, and most importantly, Rose knew it too. He half suspected that this current show of doubt meant she was as worried about herself being here as they were, and if anything that made him worry about it even more.

The First Order presence was felt even in the side streets. Stormtroopers patrolled in standard groups of two and four, their stances relaxed and their weapons at rest, but still visible every so often as Ren and the others made their way west, the ground sloping gently under their feet as they departed the main trading streets. What remained of the Port Addis business hub had hardly been impressive, but it was a gleaming metropolis compared to the shanty town they were starting to venture into as the ground leveled out again. Permanent structures became more and more scarce, replaced with cobbled-together networks of huts, sheets of discarded metal and framing hastily lashed upright or strategically leaned against each other, roofed with more of the same and the whole kept in place with piles of rubble and debris. The street became a lane and the lane became a twisting path, only distinct from the other paths disappearing into the warren of structures around it by the narrowing strip of grayish open sky up above. Some of the more enterprising residents had set up street stalls along the way, many of them selling bits of food and homemade goods, the rest cluttered with row after careful row of what would have otherwise looked like refuse, shined up a bit to hopefully attract the eye of the unwary. Steam rose from every other vendor, obscuring Ren's vision so much that even with his Force sense to aid him he barely saw the First Order patrol coming in time to react, hastily standing aside into the shadows with his head down as the soldiers passed one by one, forced to walk single file in the cramped quarters. They were close enough to him that one of their elbows brushed the leading edge of his wrap, forcing Ren even further under the overhang of one of the food stalls.

“Brittleback gills from Endor, fresh off the docks,” the vendor said behind him, and he turned automatically to see an incredibly elderly woman about a third his size, bent over a metal container that looked like something between a wok and a cauldron, heated by a steam vent chimney it had been haphazardly suspended over. Despite her advanced age her movements as she worked were smooth and efficient as she expertly poured a ladleful of gills pickled in a gelatinous purple liquid into the wok then spun it so the gills separated from each other on their own, plastered flat against the side, their pinkish veined meat looking slightly more appetizing as they began to brown.

“We'll take three, grandmother,” Rose replied just as Ren was about to turn away.

“I don't remember being your grandmother, sweets,” the woman replied, glancing up at Rose then away, picking up a couple of cheap plasticene cones. “Thought you looked like offworlders, but you've got something of Hays about you.”

“Hays Minor,” Rose said, softly but still clearly audible. For the first time the old woman's movements stuttered, almost fumbling one of the cones, and she looked at Rose again much more keenly, her eyes tracing across what was visible of Rose's face. “Not too many of you about anymore,” she commented after a moment, glancing across Finn's face then settling on Ren and his bruises, and he could only hope his hair hung down over his eyebrow enough to disguise his scar. “Who's your big friend?” the old woman asked, addressing Rose but still looking at Ren.

“He's got business in the mines.”

“Unpleasant business, I'd guess,” the woman muttered, dropping her eyes and going back to the frying gills, flipping them with a long-handled stick that didn't look as though whatever it'd originally been had been intended for this purpose. “If it's a bounty you're after you'll not get much for mining folk. We're bought cheap, one way or another.”

“Anyone else from Hays Minor around here?” Rose asked, and Ren glanced along at her sharply, feeling Finn do exactly the same. The old woman didn't notice, busy ladling the fresh gills into the cones, and Rose blatantly ignored them, pretending to be adjusting the tie around her waist for the excuse to avoid their gazes.

“Just a few,” the vendor replied, handing the cones over as Ren reluctantly paid for their portions, hoping against hope that she didn't see his datapad too clearly during the transaction. “You'll want Yulsen Boggs down by the River Muddy; he's not from Minor himself but his wife was, sky rest her, and he keeps in touch with some of the others. For you, sweets,” she added, slipping something extra into Rose's cone and clasping Rose's free hand with both of hers, looking up into her face with something very like pity. “May your sky come clear.”

“And yours,” Rose responded a little hastily, as though it had been some time since she'd heard the phrase, and as Ren finally led them back down the path he could sense in the Force the quiet ripples of her renewed grief, rising from her like the steam all around them. His own emotions were hardly in check after that exchange; how could he not also get lost again in his guilt, his shame, pressing in on him more closely than the low metal roofs of this seamy neighborhood? He stuffed the container of gills into his waistband and pushed on, wishing Rose had never come but this time selfishly wishing it for himself as much as for her sake, or the sake of the mission. The last thing he could afford was a distraction, and being reminded how much damage the First Order had already done here was a weight dragging at his mind as much as hers. 

There was little to be done at the moment but press forward, down paths that seemed designed to distract and mislead, as though the mine community didn't want anyone easily finding their way out of Addis. He imagined he could feel the eyes of the vendors and the other citizens watching them now, heads down, hands busy, but something about them alert and suspicious in a way they hadn't been before. Despite knowing for a fact it was merely his imagination- there was nothing new the Force had shown him in how the nearest people were behaving- Ren breathed a sigh of relief when the rusting structures abruptly ended and the way before them opened up into a temporary clear area. It framed what seemed to be a moving garbage heap, and it took him a long moment to realize that what he was seeing was a wide, slow-running creek, so choked with refuse that the surface of the water wasn't immediately visible beneath it.

“The River Muddy,” Rose surmised as she and Finn came level with him. “Or whatever's left of it. This is what the rivers on Hays Minor were starting to look like when I left, but that was mostly mine debris.” She looked around, a tear wetting the edge of her face wrap, her container of gills still clutched firmly in her hand. “I was right. This is so much worse.”

“Are we going to go find Yulsen Boggs?” Finn asked, looking at Ren.

“No,” he said shortly, looking around for a bridge. There were a couple makeshift crossings to choose from but none was immediately obvious as a main route forward.

“Maybe he can tell us where to go,” Finn suggested, clearly noticing the same problem.

“We're not going there.”

“Ren, look,” Rose said, and he turned to see her holding something out to him, a curved bit of metal that he initially mistook for the necklace she usually wore but that had been modified with a crude stripe of bright blue paint down the middle. “The vendor gave it to me,” Rose clarified, hiding it away again once she was sure he'd seen it. “Hidden in the gills. It's a mourning medallion, that's what the paint means, because in the Hays system when someone dies we say they've gone to the sky. You paint a blue stripe over their eyes, to give them sky-sight and to help them find their way, and if you keep something of theirs you paint a blue stripe on that too, to remember them by. Once she gave this to me I started seeing it everywhere, and I think-- I think there's a resistance movement already, on this planet, a local one.”

“And she was pointing the way to it,” Finn realized out loud, looking into his half-finished container of gills as though hoping he'd gotten a hidden message too.

“Rose--,” Ren tried to cut in, but Rose was already continuing on, her words coming a bit more quickly as if she was hurrying to get them out before he could object.

“She thinks you're bounty hunters and I'm your guide, but she knew that even if you saw her give it to me it wouldn't matter because only someone from Hays would know what it meant,” Rose explained. “Ren, I think Yulsen Boggs could help us.”

“If they find out who I am,” Ren said simply, unemotionally, “they will kill me.”

Rose almost visibly started and she and Finn shared an inscrutable glance. “They might not,” Rose muttered almost plaintively.

“They certainly will. It'd be insane not to.”

“What if we tell them we're with the Resistance, the real one?” Finn argued. “What if we explain--.”

“What if we explain to the wrong person?” Ren pointed out. “What if they decide it's worth more to them to get a few extra credits for the information and a full stomach tonight instead of taking a risk on the Supreme Leader's word? The vendor also said that mining folk are bought cheap, and I don't think she just meant as slaves. We're moving on,” he continued before they could protest again, gesturing to the bridge nearest them. “If we succeed in what we're here to do we can worry about talking to the local agitators then.”

“They might not want to talk to us then,” Rose said to his back as he turned away.

“But they might not shoot us as quickly either.”

“Ren--.”

“Rose, that's my decision,” Ren said, stopping at the foot of the bridge and turning toward her. “We can't take the risk and I'm not going to argue with you. Are you going to follow orders or not?”

“He's right,” Finn said abruptly, turning towards Rose. “Rose, it's his mission. We have to go on.” She frowned, the hand with the medallion in it tightening into a fist until Ren could almost sense the pointed end stabbing into her palm. “Rose,” Finn tried again, reaching for her, but she sidestepped away out of his reach.

“Fine,” she said tightly, dropping her down and away to the muddy shoreline. “But once we've taken the base I want to talk to them.”

“Fine,” Ren agreed, knowing there was little chance he'd ever have to follow through on the promise. By the time they'd secured the base and the blockade armada both, all three of them would have a lot more on their minds than secretive gill vendors and blue paint.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Dearest and most loyal readers, I cannot tell you what all your words of encouragement have meant all the time I've been away. I returned every now and again to read them and honestly have committed a few to memory at this point. It's been part of what kept me going and I can never thank you enough.
> 
> For those confused about the messages already left in this comments section, allow me to explain: the space currently occupied by Chapter 45 was originally a letter from me to the reader detailing that I had encountered some issues and would be away for a while, which text I have included below. As the writing now contiues, I decided to make the space a regular part of the story from now on so as not to interrupt new and future readers of TRLS with a memorial to my troubles, but have also added this explanantion as well for those who do not know the history of those comments that have been left and that I could never imagine now removing or hiding in any way. Let them stay as a testament to how good and kind people, even strangers on the internet, can still be, and how incredibly worthwhile this fanfic community that we all love remains.
> 
> Thanks, again, and always.
> 
> Original Chapter Title: A message  
Original Chapter Summary: Not a chapter, just a letter  
Original Chapter Text: To my dear and loyal readers,
> 
> due to a personal crisis I will be unable to be active online for a little while. To be entirely candid, it is just too hard, and I am just too sad.
> 
> I cannot begin to find the words to express how deeply, eternally grateful I am for your kudos, your comments, and all the kindness and support and love you have shown me. It really is one of the things that keeps me on my feet. You will never know the difference you make. Thank you, thank you, thank you, always.
> 
> I hope I will not be away long. I love this story too, and I have so much more to tell you, but it is a terrible and depressing truth that sometimes something comes along that just levels you, and today I am utterly leveled.
> 
> Yours faithfully,
> 
> H


	46. Rey steps into the furnace

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> On the third moon of Lok, Rey begins refining the Sith Kyber crystal

****WARNING**** If you are a returning reader, the text of Chapter 45 used to be a letter but is now a chapter in its own right. GO BACK, read the new Chapter 45, then COME BACK HERE and read Chapter 46. (also, good to see you again :) )

  
  
The furnace was a tiny thing, not much bigger than a very large closet, and Rey eyed it warily as she made her way down into the shallow, bowl-like depression in the stone where Leia had decided to set it up. It was a little further from camp than Rey had expected but Leia had worried if it were any nearer Ammu and Ani would end up sniffing around it a little too much. Even now they sat patiently to one side, just a boy and his growing akk dog, watching her approach expectantly as though they sat ringside at what promised to be an interesting show.

“I think we have the controls worked out,” Leia said, standing up from a panel and dusting off her hands as R2D2 rolled past, retracting a mechanical arm fitted with a large, old-fashioned hackport back into his casing. “You shouldn't have any trouble getting out once you're inside; any noticeable push against the door outwards should override the locking mechanism and cause an automatic pressure release. It's going to be a bit windy, having the superheated air rush out all at once, but I feel better knowing you have a failsafe just in case.”

“Me too,” Rey said, ducking her head inside and looking it over for a moment. It was a plain metal box, the inside shining dully while the outside was worn and sand-colored, a bit banged up but, according to the Resistance engineers, very dependable. It was meant to refine small amounts of ore, however, and was a bit squat even for a human person as relatively small as Rey, with only very slightly enough room to stand up-- not that that would be a problem, she reminded herself, since she'd spend the greater portion of her time inside in meditation position in the air to keep from touching the sides. The furnace's radiant heat shouldn't bother her too much as long as she maintained her focus in the Force and kept her body temperature down, but in order for the furnace to get to a high enough temperature to refine a Kyber crystal it would have to get hot enough to roast her several times over.

“Maybe we should do a trial run,” Leia suggested, watching her with a worried expression.

“This is the trial run,” Rey assured her with a smile she didn't very much feel, ducking back out and stretching. “I'm just going to meditate with the crystal this time, get to know it. We'll figure things out from there.”

“You're nothing if not persistent,” Leia acknowledged, managing a smile herself even though the frown lines between her brows persisted as she turned away, retrieving the duracrete case. “Take your time with the process, Rey. I'm certain you can do it with enough time and focus.”

_And the whole galaxy on the edge of collapse if I fail_, Rey couldn't help but think, keeping her smile in place as Leia undid the case's bindings. Ammu and Ani seemed to lean forward attentively as one, Ammu's eyes widening as Leia lifted the lid away. The furnace had been set up in a patch of shadow, slightly darkening the red of the crystal inside, and Rey could almost have mistaken it for just a pretty, sparkly rock if not for the strong feeling of the Dark Force emanating from it in regular, fluttering pulses, as though the crystal had a heartbeat.

“Take it,” Leia urged, and Rey pushed aside her misgivings and reached forward, picking the crystal up. It was roughly oval in shape and faceted at random, sparking slightly even in the dull light as it settled in the center of her palm, not much bigger than a baby moon frog. She couldn't say why it felt so wrong to her, only that there was something unmistakably malevolent about it, as though if the crystal could grow hands she could imagine it reaching up and trying to strangle her.

“Stay back,” Leia said, and Rey blinked up at her in confusion before realizing Leia had been talking to Ammu, who had gotten to his feet as though the motion was half unconscious instinct, eyes fixed on the shining red stone.

“What is it?” he asked, freezing in place but not looking away, Ani also freezing at his heels.

“A Sith Kyber crystal,” Leia replied, putting the box to the side and returning to the furnace's control panel, fiddling with something. “Taken from the remains of an ancient lightsaber much older than any of us,” she continued without missing a beat. “In time, and with patience, Rey might be able to heal it.”

“'Heal it'?” Rey asked just a moment before Ammu could do the same.

“Kyber crystals do not naturally align with the Dark Side. In order to create a Sith crystal it used to be that a Sith apprentice had to break the crystal's spirit before they could bend the crystal to their will. It's what gives it that red color; in the Old Republic they would say that the Sith made their crystals bleed.”

Rey looked back at the stone in her palm, a little taken aback by this revelation. Suddenly it didn't seem to pulse so much as though it had a heartbeat but as if it was throbbing in pain, pain from a wound so ancient that no one could begin to guess how long ago it had been inflicted. _It's like me_ , she found herself thinking, surprised and a little disconcerted at the sudden thought. _It's wounded like me_.

“Are you ready for this, Rey?” Leia asked, looking up from the panel.

“Yes,” Rey lied, more certain than ever that she was not ready for this at all. How could one damaged thing heal another, especially when the one doing the healing didn't know how to heal herself? But Leia had already punched in the sequence to start the furnace, closing the door and going around the outside, switching on the coils one by one. The moment she'd moved to the coils on the other side of the machine and out of sight Ammu closed the gap between himself and Rey, Ani creeping along just behind him, his large, cloudy eyes watchful, head down as though braced. Ammu paid him no attention, staring at the red crystal in Rey's hand as though he'd never seen something so fascinating. She almost closed her fingers over it to keep it away from him but something stopped her, some feeling more instinct than thought, a gentle swell in the Force emanating from the boy.

“Can I touch it?” he asked in a reverential tone, never once looking up at her.

“Yes,” she said quietly, watching as he reached forward and hesitated for just a moment before his fingers brushed the stone, their green color sharply contrasting with the red surface as Ammu reached out in the Force for the briefest of moments. He narrowed his eyes, his lips tightening just like Ben's did when he was unhappy.

“Ammu!” Leia said sharply, emerging on the other side of the furnace and catching sight of what was going on. Ammu physically jumped, backing away guiltily, holding the hand that had touched his crystal close to his stomach as though to shield it from Leia's sight. “I told you not to touch that. Go back to the tent,” Leia ordered, pointing away in the direction of their camp. Ammu turned without comment, all but sprinting away, Ani hot on his heels. Leia frowned after them then sighed, shaking her head. “I didn't mean to scare him but that boy worries me,” she muttered almost to herself, putting her hands on her hips as R2 passed her, also rolling toward the camp with a few reassuring beeps and whirs meant to indicate he'd keep them out of trouble. “Hmph,” Leia snorted at that, shaking her head but managing a small smile. “I don't know if anything or anybody can keep those two from sticking their noses where they don't belong. Better get in now,” she added, turning and squeezing Rey's arm encouragingly. “It'll be easier for you to get used to the heat if you start while it's still relatively cool.”

“Alright,” Rey agreed, closing her fingers around the crystal and turning to the furnace, bracing herself as she opened the door. A flood of new heat greeted her, eddying past as though she stood in the current of a swift-flowing stream, but no worse than the hottest wind on Jakku had ever been. At least that was what she told herself as she stepped inside, turning back just in time to see Leia swinging the door shut behind her, sending Rey into perfect darkness. Rey's hands tightened into fists automatically as the primal instinct to panic surged up within her and had to be fought down, the crystal pulsing more than ever against her skin as she clamped down on it.

There was no light at all. She'd forgotten about that part, but the inner shell of the furnace was sealed to keep the contents clear of any direct contact with the coils, also cutting off the reddish-orange light that hot coils usually produced. She took a deep breath, remembering to use the Force to draw in the air from outside rather than the heated air around her. She'd been practicing all morning in the Falcon, the only other airtight container they had available to them, and it had gone well enough then, but she had to expend extra focus now to ward off the heat invading her nose, her mouth, her skin. The air from outside had felt warm enough while she'd been standing on the sandy stone, but from in here it now seemed as cool as though she pulled it directly from a freezing unit. That helped, clearing her head, pushing the panic down as her hands loosened and she made the rest of her body relax, matching its temperature to the outside air, pulling in more and more to remind herself what that was. She closed her eyes, since keeping them open would hardly help her anyway, and picked herself up into midair, crossing her legs and straightening her spine, hands folded loosely together in her lap, the crystal between them.

The furnace was getting noticeably hotter. Even while using the Force to create a cocoon of coolness around her body she could feel herself sweating, and the path she'd opened to the air outside seemed to narrow under the pressure of the heat as though she was trying to draw each breath through a straw. Rey moved to counter each discomfort, each new problem as it arose, but it was discouraging to realize how much energy and focus she was having to expend just on that. Secretly she'd hoped that the process of refining the crystal wouldn't be so bad, that with enough heat and pressure and with her innate ability in the Force she could somehow feel her way through it, but if anything she could already sense that the crystal itself was going to be the biggest problem. It sat between her hands like a venomous creature, tight with the promise of intended malice, as though it knew what she was going to try to do and intended to resist it with all its strength.

_Let me in_ , Rey thought at it, settling the issue of her immediate environment in a way that seemed to be passable for the moment and turning her attention to that other, alien fluctuation in the Force, opening herself to it. _Let me understand you_. If the crystal heard- if it even had the capacity to hear- it did not respond, and Rey pressed down harder with her thoughts, her intention, the bond as her center, the connection to Ben as steady and unshakable as she was not. She tried to pull her sympathy to the fore, her understanding. The crystal was at best, uninterested, at worst, immune.

Surely it wasn't her wound that was the problem. Surely it wasn't that one incident in the tunnels, that one push that pushed beyond her strength, that was still holding her back now. She tucked her head down, focusing, pulling her hands apart and using the Force to suspend the crystal between them so that the heat could reach it, pushing with all the pressure she could summon, with all her might.

_Let me in_, she insisted with all her strength, pushing, pushing. The crystal did not answer her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: One of those things that had to happen at some point. I know I could just have her find another lightsaber ~somewhere~ but something about having her make her own feels much more character development-y to me, especially with having her unsteady in the meantime. There's just a lot more I can do with that.


	47. A new voice

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ren has to contend with yet another unexpected encounter

Rose was silent, watching from the window of the slightly tilted ruin they'd ended up in, keeping carefully to the shadows as she stared out into the haphazard rubble that remained of Henchbrao City, her hand on her blaster but less as though she intended to use it and more out of habit. Ren and Finn took turns watching her and exchanging silent, worried glances with each other as they waited for night to fall. The trip from Port Addis to the ruins had been uneventful; no matter how many times Ren had seen the numbers on his datapad he had failed to really comprehend how many thousands of mine slaves were involved in this venture until he was in among them. They'd passed the First Order patrols with ease, the stormtroopers relaxed and inattentive, scanning them without seeing them, on the lookout for immediate trouble only.

But it was the slaves themselves that had given them trouble. Not directly-- they'd hardly looked at Ren and the others, much less made any revelatory or aggressive motion towards them, but had all but invariably kept their heads down and their eyes focused on their feet as they slogged to and from. It was Rose, as expected, that was the problem, her feelings swelling in the Force as she saw them, how ragged and dirty and exhausted and hopeless they all were, utterly uninterested in anything around them, transforming her mere fear and concern into disbelief, then contempt, then rage. Now she stood in the shadow of the window, her stance tight, her expression thoughtful, and not in a way either Ren or Finn liked.

“Not long now,” Finn said after a long while, disrupting the forbidding silence as he got to his feet, stretching. Something in the ruins shifted, some final wall or roof collapsing, an ominous rumble all three of them turned towards, waiting, listening. Ren reached out in the Force just to make sure, but it had been nowhere near them and the aftershocks were already dying away as the new pile of rubble settled.

“It's fine,” he narrated out loud, and they all relaxed.

“I can see why no one's spending their free time here,” Finn muttered, kneeling down and rifling through his pack. “Thought this place would be full of bandits or vagrants or something but even they don't want to take the chance of getting buried under a ton of duracrete. You're sure you checked this one?”

“Finn,” Ren replied without needing to clarify, reminding him with that one word alone of the three or four times he'd already answered that question.

“I know, I know, just want to make sure you're still sharp,” Finn said, digging out a flask and standing back to his feet, approaching Rose. “Hey,” he said to get her attention, holding out the flask as she started slightly and turned towards him. “Jet juice?”

“Oh-- yeah, I guess. Sure,” she said, taking the flask and sipping, the distant expression on her face not shifting an inch. She swallowed twice and handed it back to him.

“You good?” Finn asked, lifting the flask to his lips but then lowering it again, examining her.

“Fine,” Rose said, looking back out the window.

“You sure?”

“Finn,” she said in almost exactly the same tone Ren had used, her hand drifting back to her blaster.

“Okay, okay,” he agreed, backing off, circling back around to where he'd been sitting before and leaning against the wall. This time he did drink from the flask, a little more heavily than Rose had, screwing up his eyes slightly as the liquor hit.

“Have you been paying attention to the stormtroopers we've passed?” Ren asked, waving away the flask when Finn jerked it his direction questioningly.

“Um, yeah, a bit,” Finn blatantly lied, his eyes drifting back to Rose. She didn't seem to notice.

“Have you sensed anything else? Felt anything else?”

“Not yet.”

This was pointless. Ren sighed, getting to his feet and dusting himself off. “I'm going to meditate, try to focus in the Force,” he narrated. “If I can find somewhere safe I'll send an update to Chewie, let him know we're on schedule. Finn, stay with Rose.” Finn visibly relaxed, clearly relieved to not have to leave her while she was this distracted, this- if they were going to put it bluntly- vulnerable. Ren tried not to frown at that but it was a near miss, and he was also relieved to put some distance between himself and both of them, going back out to what remained of this street and turning west, wending his way closer to the mines.

The First Order had tried to scatter some surveillance tech in these ruins, doing their due diligence to watch the immediate surroundings of the base, and scattered bits of casing and circuit boards in and among the rubble showed how well that had gone. Other than some basic drone scanners they seemed to have given up on that idea and the scanners were focused mostly on the borders, not within the ruins themselves. With the aid of the Force they were easy to evade and Ren soon found himself near the mines again, climbing on his hands and feet the remains of a staircase that tilted crazily but seemed stable enough. He emerged into what had once been a second story but was now barely a ledge, the walls almost intact but the floor bottomed out long ago, shielded from the elements by a listing bit of roof. It was an ideal lookout and he picked his way to the part of the wall that had crumbled, standing carefully to the side and peering out. The mine entrance was visible, flanked by more stormtroopers than he'd seen in one place on Hays Major so far, a clear road leading from there to the Henchbrao Base entrance. It wasn't the most attractive of First Order bases, the gate squat and so heavily fortified that at this angle it was impossible to see into the base at all even with the gate standing open, but recent char marks on the nearby walls bore testimony to why so much fortification had been necessary. Assuming it was the local unrest to blame they had certainly been busy, and a clear two units of stormtroopers were visible, patrolling on the ground and on the wall up above.

Ren squatted back down, pulling out his datapad. Even if there were mine slaves or bosses who routinely entered the base it was clear that that wouldn't be the way forward for them now. Whoever this Yulsen Boggs character was, his petty acts of defiance had done more to aid the base in its defenses than to deplete them. The far side of Henchbrao was more likely to be their way in, and it'd be a climb but it'd get them into command faster.

_We'll be stuck here forever_, a voice moaned, clear and nearby, so close it was nearly on the ledge next to him. Ren started, dropping his datapad so he could reach out that hand manually in the Force as he called his saber hilt to the other, straightening and just barely resisting firing the blade. The Force showed him nothing, nothing but the ruins and himself.

“Who is that?” he murmured, looking out through the gap in the wall, surveying the rubble. There was silence for a moment- he could almost call it surprised silence- then the voice spoke again.

_Who is that?_ it asked back.

“I'm Kylo Ren,” Ren said, realizing, reaching out in a different way. The voice was in his head, but it wasn't Rey; it couldn't be, not at whatever distance separated them now. And it obviously wasn't Finn, the only other Force user he knew of in close proximity, nor did it sound like him. A being on Hays Major?

_Kylo Ren_, the voice repeated as he slowly squatted back down, his saber hilt still in his hand, as though that could help him now.

_Yes_, he thought back at it nonverbally, frowning. He felt he knew this voice but he couldn't possibly have said from where; nor was the sensation of speaking this way entirely unfamiliar, and not just from speaking to Rey.

_You're the bad man_, the voice told him.

_Well, that's what some people say_, Ren replied, trying to puzzle it out. It felt-- it felt the way talking to Snoke had felt, while he was still with Luke, when Snoke had just been a mystery in his head. The Force had connected them then, or Snoke's own enormous power, or some combination of the two. It was a little late to ask him.

_I probably shouldn't be talking to you_.

_And yet here we are_. Ren closed his eyes, concentrating. The feeling of the voice teased at him, a distant memory, or moment.

_Master Skywalker wouldn't like this._

Ren's eyes snapped open in surprise as he realized, as an image finally rose in his mind, a little green boy stepping out of tall grasses, an akk dog at his side. _You're Leia's apprentice._

_Yes_, came the reply, stiff, defiant. Even in the midst of his bafflement Ren had to smile. _You were on the ship_.

_The Falcon. I remember. You came to see me_. Ren relaxed against the wall, replacing his saber at his side as he picked the datapad back up. Even if it was just a child, and even if it was this particular child, there was something comfortable about talking to someone like this. _Your name's Ammu, isn't it?_

_Yes._

_How's your akk dog?_

_Getting bigger_. Curiosity was winning out, Ren could feel it somehow, not in the same way that he felt things in his bond with Rey but in something about the child's tone, in Ren's innate sense of him. Had this been what it had felt like for Snoke, when he was talking to Ren? The thought was an uncomfortable one and Ren frowned, pushing it away. _Where are you?_ Ammu asked.

_On a planet called Hays Major. Where are you?_

_Far away_, Ammu said vaguely-- deliberately vaguely. Already there was little trust lost on his end of things. _What are you doing there?_

Ren smiled, allowing the dodge. _We're about to get in a fight._

_A big fight?_

_Probably._

Ammu sighed. _I wish I could fight. Master Skywalker says I'm too little._

_She's probably right_. Leia. Leia, raising another child that wasn't him, training him in the ways of the Force when she'd refused to train her own son herself. How differently might things have turned out, if his own mother had wanted him instead of sending him to Luke? Did she wonder the same thing? Did she wonder it now, while training another little boy, a different little boy, after the catastrophe from before?

Ren tilted his head back, sighing as he released the thoughts, the anxiety they brought with them, the uncertainty, the wondering. It was amazing how long such things could linger even when he thought he'd discarded them.

_Are you tired?_ Ammu asked, clearly hearing Ren's sigh as Ren had heard his.

_A little_. Silence followed, silence that lasted for so long he could almost think Ammu had gone, or the connection had ended as quickly as it began, except for some lingering sense of presence, as though Ammu was still nearby.

_Can you talk to everybody like this?_ Ammu asked after a long time.

_I can talk to Rey in my head, but we have to be very close to each other._

_No one else?_

_No._ Another silence, this one pure puzzlement, a puzzlement Ren was a little surprised to find he no longer shared. There was only one obvious reason a connection like this could exist involuntarily, a Force channel opening outside of the will or intention of either party, especially between a comparatively experienced Force user and another, completely untested youngling. A youngling that had been drawn to him on the planet the Rebels were occupying, enough to climb down a mountain through clouds of poisonous gas to follow the feeling of him. A youngling Ren himself had felt drawn to, enough to get up out of bed and go meet him, even though Ren hadn't realized that was what he'd been doing at the time.

A youngling he could talk to across untold distances of space, in his head, with neither strain nor fatigue, in exactly the same way Snoke had talked to him.

_Why can you talk to me?_ Ammu asked at last.

_Because I don't think you're Leia's apprentice, Ammu,_ Ren answered. _I think you're mine._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: I have been planning this for a very long time, readers; it may be one of the main things I wanted to achieve in this series. Of course there are a couple other things still to come, but it was a relief to finally get the payoff for this one on paper :)


	48. The Commander takes point

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A new plan, and new potential outcomes

Ammu went silent at that. Ren asked after him several times, repeating Ammu's name in his head, but if the child could still hear him he didn't answer. In a while his sense of Ammu faded and was gone.

How had this happened? Ren stayed in his outpost, watching the light fade as night fell, knowing he should return to Finn and Rose, putting it off for one moment longer, then another. How had such a powerful connection fallen into place without him feeling it, without him noticing? Ammu could be forgiven the lapse- he was, after all, very small, and completely new to the Force- but Ren could not, especially given his generous prior experience with Force bonds, and even Force bonds of this kind.

It was no real surprise that Ammu wouldn't welcome the revelation. Ren stood at last, dusting himself off and tracing his way back across the room, to the tilted staircase and the maze of ruins beyond, trying to remember how his first conversations with Snoke had gone. To him it had just been a kindly voice in his head that seemed to understand his worries and cares better than anyone else, a mental escape he didn't really bother to be suspicious of, to try and resist or explain. If he had known who Snoke was at the time, what he was, no doubt he would have reacted the same way Ammu had, but Ren had been completely guileless and Snoke had been the very soul of guile. There had never really been much hope for him from the start.

And what about Finn? Ren stopped in the shadow of a building, sensing a First Order scanner drone above, waiting for it to pass before he continued on his way. There was no connection between Ren and Finn beyond the usual Force connections they could each initiate manually when near each other, though of course if Ren had Finn as a student over a long period of time that was likely to change. If that was the case, exactly how many voices was he looking forward to having in his head? Ren frowned at the idea, moving on as the drone left to sweep another area. Again, and uncomfortably, he was forced to consider figures from his past in a new light. Luke must have had a direct connection to most of his students at the bare minimum, especially those who had been with him for most of their lives, as Ren had. Luke had never spoken in Ren's head but they'd had an involuntary sense of each other, though looking back he suspected his usurping connection with Snoke had eclipsed whatever the prior bond would have become. Had Luke been able to feel that? Had he suspected the bond with Ren was not progressing as it should?

Ren was almost relieved when his thoughts were interrupted by his sense of Finn and Rose, still stationed in the building where he'd left them, and when he entered it was to see them waiting expectantly, packs on and ready.

“I was meditating and I felt you coming,” Finn explained, looking rather proud of the feat.

“Good,” Ren acknowledged, watching outside as another drone scanner flew past, close enough to bear keeping an eye on but too far away to be concerned about. “The entrance facing the mines is a no-go, it looks like it's already seen plenty of action and they've got two squads on it now.”

“So there IS a local Resistance movement!” Rose confirmed in grim triumph.

“Of some kind. It's made it impossible for us to us to sneak in that way so we're going to have to make our way around and try entering from the north side. Longer, but it should give us quicker access to command.”

“Through the tunnels?” Finn asked.

“I doubt they extend that far. No Base Commander with two brain cells to rub together would allow mine tunnels to be drilled beneath the base, especially with obvious unrest already fomenting nearby. Look what happened here,” he narrated, gesturing to the city around them. “We'll have to loop back to Addis and get as far north inside the city as we can before we begin our approach. If we can find an air duct or vent rather than climbing the walls directly, that'd be ideal.”

Finn and Rose glanced at each other out of the corners of their eyes, Rose frowning, Finn shooting her what was almost a warning look. “Unless there's something I've missed,” Ren added, watching them.

“If we're going back through Port Addis we should contract the Resistance,” Rose declared in what was for her an extremely decisive tone. “The Resistance on Hays Major, I mean, not the actual Rebels, but they can help us and they deserve to be a part of this. They've earned being a part of this, especially-- especially the ones from Hays Minor. And you owe it,” she added sternly, drawing herself up and looking Ren as near to directly in the eye as she could, being so much shorter than him. “You owe it to them, to all of us.”

Ren stared then glanced over to Finn, who seemed determined to avoid his gaze. “It sounds like this is something you two have been discussing at length.”

“I'm right,” Rose insisted.

“Whether or not I have a debt to make up to the people of this system is not something we can be distracted by right now. There is no chance, at all, that any homegrown Resistance on this planet would be interested in accepting any help of mine. The moment they know who I am we'll be fighting on two fronts instead of one.”

“I think you're wrong.”

“You know I'm not. Rose, I can feel the doubt in you,” he added as she moved to speak again. “Whatever you believe about the basic goodness of people, the hardship and grief these people have experienced will completely eclipse their logic. Even if it were possible to talk them out of it, we don't have the time.”

She stared at him for a long moment, lips tight, eyes hard, not looking as though she was either convinced nor willing to be. “Then we don't tell them it's you,” she finally said.

“I intend to use my lightsaber in the assault and I'm fairly certain a giant glowing red sword might tip them off.”

“Not if they're not there to see it. What if WE go to them,” she suggested, gesturing between herself and Finn, “as real Rebels, like Finn said, real Resistance fighters. Say we've got a plan in place to take the base and convince them to help. We can come around the front,” she added hurriedly before Ren could point out that that suggestion had essentially the same flaws as the one before, “and attack the main gate while you're on the north side breaking in. You said that the gate had already been attacked before, so they won't think it's suspicious, and by the time they've pushed us back you'll already be inside. Then the local rebellion might not care as much, if it's you.”

It was Ren's turn to stare, genuinely at a loss for a response. Rose's plan not only accomplished exactly what they both wanted, it was superior to his in pretty much every way. “What is your rank in the Resistance, Rose?” he finally asked.

She blinked, taken aback. “Um, Commander. Technically.”

“It's deserved. We'll do it your way.” He turned back to the gap in the ruins he'd originally come through, checking that the coast was clear, the scanner drones far enough to the periphery that they could get back out of the ruins without too much hassle.

“Do... do you mean it?” Rose asked clearly taken aback. Ren glanced back at her, raising his eyebrows.

“It's the better plan, Commander.”

“Oh. Well. Thank you.”

“We should go now,” he replied, turning away. “While there's a gap in the pattern.”

There was nothing more to be said and he didn't give them the time, leading the way back out into the ruins, picking a roundabout path towards the road. In the darkness every modicum of focus was needed to pay attention to the rubble, rumbling under their feet every so often. They moved single file, following where Ren led as he used the Force to guide their way, safely through and out to the road to Port Addis, busy with enough slaves going to and fro that they could blend in with the rest of the crowd. Rose didn't seem so effected by them this time, her feeling in the Force all focus and purpose, Finn's feeling more relief and gratitude which he seemed almost to be trying to project at Ren of his own accord. It was both unnecessary and uncomfortable and as they approached Port Addis Ren found he was all but looking forward to separating for the time being.

They ducked under the leading edge of the shantytown in silence, only stopping when they were far enough inside that even the sounds of the miners on the roads had almost completely disappeared. There was little to no light and they had to crowd together to even begin to see each other, watching the murky shadows around them with sideways glances and narrow eyes. Ren didn't speak until he'd extended his sense in the Force as far as he could, determined to keep it brief.

“What's the earliest you think you'll be able to move?” he asked once he was satisfied they weren't being surveilled, his voice low.

“It depends,” Rose replied just as quietly. “If we can get enough people together we won't be able to move until the change of shift, not without drawing attention to ourselves, but can you wait that long on your own?”

“I'll be fine. Try to get some sleep between now and then. Finn?”

“Yeah?”

“Keep an eye out,” he reminded him. “Focus. Let your feelings come to you. Pay attention to them.”

“I will,” Finn said, nodding, but at the same time Ren turned, mentally reaching out.

“Someone's coming,” he murmured, and as though it had been a cue they dispersed, disappearing in different directions, Ren down the path that led through the warren to the north, Finn and Rose down an identical path that led south. Within moments they were gone; only a few short minutes later, Finn and Rose had passed beyond the upper limit of Ren's senses.

For an offworlder alone Port Addis was probably not the most pleasant of places, particularly this portion of it, and Ren stayed alert as he went, ignoring the slow simmer of fatigue in his mind. He'd do well to find somewhere to sleep too before he left the city entirely; it was hardly impossible to go another day, or even several more days if he had to, but in circumstances this delicate there was no reason to take unnecessary risks.

He made it quite a ways before he picked up on the two locals following him, their dishonest intentions clear in their feelings, if not just in their movements themselves. Both stayed well back and deep in the shadows, choosing paths parallel to his, studying him in preparation for whatever it was they intended to do, which was at the very least robbery and perhaps included knocking him over the head or giving him a quick shiv to the back in the meantime. Ren had little trouble giving them the slip even with his lesser knowledge of the narrow paths and hidey holes of Addis, but soon picked up another interested party of six, this one much more purposeful in their pursuit, spreading out around him and moving as though to cut him off. It took far more work to evade their net, and by the time he was sure they'd either lost him or given up the chase he was nearly to the edge of the city and had to double back in and east to choose a place to lay low for a few hours. There was no point traveling out towards the base until much later; his datapad could show him very little promising terrain to use for cover and he didn't particularly want to spend hour after hour sheltering in the lee of some snowbank somewhere.

The building he decided on was on the border between shantytown and the main city itself, a building that had once had three stories but now barely had two. It was heavily shut up and though it looked as though the locks had been tested more than once so far the barriers over the doors and windows had held. Ren circled it twice to make sure it was empty and that there were no unwelcome eyes on him, of either the living or mechanical variety, then moved quickly and decisively in the Force, ripping off one half of a metal grate guarding the back door. He squeezed himself through the gap then pulled the metal bars back into the holes they'd left behind; there was no way to reattach them but without actually grabbing the grate and yanking at it there was also no way to tell that its base was no longer secure.

What the building had been before it was abandoned was impossible to say. The darkness inside was complete, and in the Force Ren could feel shapes and surfaces that without his physical sight made no sense to him. It hardly mattered; he found the decommissioned airlift to the second floor and decided to camp there, trusting to the low barrier of the lift to buy him time in the unlikely event anyone followed him in. He made himself drink some water and eat one of his ration portions before going to sleep, both for the fuel and for the added moments spent monitoring the area around him, but could sense no threats in his immediate area. By the time he was done he was satisfied that it was safe to go to ground here for the time being, and hope that Rose and Finn would manage to make good on their part of the plan.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Ren's weaknesses tally so very well with his strengths. He's too hard on himself, but at the same time when dealing with others he really doesn't indulge too much in pride. Arrogance, sometimes- earned arrogance, when his Force abilities are showing him something others aren't privy to, or an arrogant facade when it moves things in the direction he wants them to go more quickly- but the moment he thinks he's actually wrong about something he's willing to give way. This is one of the things about him I think most often take others off guard, especially those who have already assumed the worst about him.


	49. Resisting pressure

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Refining the crystal is not going well

Rey found herself wandering under the crust, straying farther from camp than she'd ever been before as she explored, skirting the edges of the algae pools as the moon frogs watched her pass. She took the crystal with her-- she took it wherever she went now, convinced it must somehow help. Even if she couldn't befriend the crystal perhaps she could get used to it enough to start finding a way in. After the first session in the furnace had yielded no results she'd even considered sleeping with it at her side, but the radiating malevolence she could feel whenever it was near warned her off that plan, promising at best a restless night and at worst, unpleasant visions the moment her eyes closed.

Now, on the second day of her attempts, she wasn't feeling much better about things. She'd emerged from the furnace a couple hours before with nothing to show for her troubles that looked even remotely like progress, nothing except overheated clothing and a couple burns on her shoulders and elbows where her focus had started to waver there at the end. It wasn't a promising start, and Rey stalked across the undulating stone still smarting from the defeat, both physically and mentally. When she'd first set out she'd had a vague idea of finding one of the pools of clean water they'd been talking about and taking a swim, trying to get rid of a little bit of her frustration and some of the stinging of the burns in one. Now, however, as she circled back on herself again and again, that was seeming less and less likely.

She should have asked Ani and Ammu for directions. She stopped at a crossroads that looked vaguely familiar, propping her hands on her hips and giving the diverging paths a suspicious stare. She'd thought that she might might be able to find her way just by going off in the direction they'd indicated a few days before, but now she was definitely lost. Not too lost to be able to find her way back to camp, she didn't think- she was getting a little better at gauging her general directions based on which way the sun was streaming through the gaps to the surface- but definitely too lost to find a completely new spot she hadn't been to before.

The crystal was pushing her negative emotions. Rey closed her eyes and took a deep breath, centering herself. She knew it, she could feel it. She shouldn't feel as frustrated as she did, as harried, as antagonized, not after only two failed attempts and a little difficulty figuring out where she was. It was irrational, and Rey knew that too, but somehow that made it worse, not better.

She pressed on in the vague direction that would probably lead back to camp, finding a shallow sandstone ridge and walking up it, hoping to see farther. There was still no source of freshwater in sight. Not unless Ammu and Ani had meant one of the shallow frog pools, of course, and Rey doubted that. There was also no sign of the Falcon, hidden somewhere in the maze of twisting stone columns and slanting beams of sunlight, so bright and thick themselves that they almost seemed just as solid as the stone. The was probably overall a good thing, not that they expected a lot of unfriendly eyes to be seeking them out below the surface. The moon frogs were unlikely to mount an attack.

Rey frowned, crouching down then sitting, dangling her legs off the side of the ridge as she fished the Kyber crystal out of her pack. They were near enough to one of the beams of light that she could see through it a little if she held it up in front of her so she did, tilting it back and forth, studying every facet. It looked exactly the same as it had the first time she'd seen it. Already today she'd held it up to the light more than once, trying to discern if the red looked a little lighter than before, or waterier, or as if one side of it had changed. What did Sith crystals look like if they'd only been half-healed? Did it start at the edges and work its way in? Did the whole thing lighten by degrees? Did it get patchy, only being healed bit by bit?

Rey had no answers and no way to get any, no one to ask. Leaving the Jedi texts behind at Ord Canfre had been the safest decision, even though she'd regretted it since, but she'd only been able to decode a portion of them anyway and had found very little about the refining process for Kyber crystals except that it needed to be done in a furnace and page after page of information about where Kyber crystals used to have been found and how they could be harvested.

She could ask Ben. Rey blew out a breath and rocked backwards slightly to stare at the ceiling, thinking. Ben would almost certainly know something but the bond hadn't opened since before Ord Canfre. This mission was top-top-top secret from everyone, and probably especially from him, even though no one had said that part out loud. If the bond had opened spontaneously and he caught sight of the crystal, or of Rey in the furnace, that'd be different; he'd know immediately what she was doing and it wouldn't be her fault and then she could ask him whatever she wanted to.

She looked back at the crystal, frowning at both its defiance and its redness. It was a nice open-eyes dream to believe that Ben would have all the answers but the bond never done anything at a convenient time or in a convenient way; there was no reason to believe it would start now. Rey sighed, closing her fingers around the crystal and lowering her hand back to her lap, looking out across the vista of hollows and columns, shadows and sunlight. She was on her own with this one, and at this point it looked like it was just going to take however long it was going to take.

An approaching presence interrupted her mental cycle of annoyance and self-pity and she turned around to see Leia making her way through the stone eddies toward her, raising a hand in greeting as Rey noticed her. Rey raised a hand back and smiled in welcome, relieved to have something else to focus on for a few moments.

“Looking for me?” she asked once Leia got close enough to hear her.

“Not directly, no,” Leia admitted, her breathing a little labored as she reached Rey and leaned against the ridge Rey was sitting on, her head about level with Rey's waist. “You won't believe it but I'm actually trying to track down Ani and Ammu, again. Sometimes I wonder if that's all I came here to do, turn on your furnace and then go looking for my apprentice. But today I happened to feel you out here in the mean time so I thought I'd say hello.”

“Well, hello,” Rey said, looking down at the crystal. “I've been wandering around trying to find that fresh water Ani said he could smell but haven't gotten anywhere with it.”

“Thirsty?”

“Hot,” Rey corrected. “Thought I could use a dip to cool off and think. Maybe even a proper bath.”

“We probably all could,” Leia agreed, looking around them. “And it'd be nice to restock the Falcon's refresher so we could keep ourselves clean that way too, without having to take a long hike every time. Maybe that will be my new project with the boys, wherever they are. I'm sure they could both stand a bath as well.”

“I doubt you could fit Ani into the refresher.”

“True. I think he's nearly half-grown by now. Once he's full-sized we'll have to keep him in the loading bay and neither of them are going to like that. I'd guess Ammu will just start sleeping in cargo with him.” She glanced down at Rey's hands, clearly sensing the Dark object within. “That little rock giving you trouble?”

“Just a bit,” Rey admitted. “I'd say it's resisting me but that would mean I've actually managed to put enough pressure on it that it has to resist.”

“What have you tried so far?”

“Talking to it. Pushing my feelings at it. Pressure in general. It's hard to stay in for too long when the furnace gets up to full temperature,” she admitted, gesturing to her burned shoulders.

“Did the heat get to you?” Leia asked sympathetically.

“Only a little. I guess I would have been burnt to a crisp if I'd let it get in all the way. I put some burn salve on, and that helped.” She sighed, putting the crystal back into her pack. “I'm not sure what to do.”

“You'll figure it out,” Leia said reassuringly, patting her knee. “Give it time.”

“I'm trying. But wandering around on my own feeling sorry for myself probably isn't helping,” Rey confessed, glancing back in the vague direction of camp. “Maybe I'll meditate and see if I can come up with any new ideas.”

Leia nodded but seemed to hesitate, glancing back towards camp as well then surveying the area around them again, as though there might be someone there to listen in on their conversation. “I was wondering, Rey, if you'd heard anything.”

“Heard anything?” Rey repeated, frowning. They were strictly radio silent still, no comms in or out since they'd landed and no comms allowed until they left.

“Well, with you being on your own I wondered-- if you'd heard from my son again.”

“Oh-- no, no I haven't,” Rey answered, surprised to have been asked directly as Leia looked away, continuing to study the terrain around them. “I mean, I wish I had, but the bond hasn't opened.”

“Poe's report said that the two of you could communicate at will, if you were alone and both open to your connection in the Force,” Leia pointed out, her tone academic, emotionless, as if she was quizzing Rey about different lightsaber techniques.

“Well, we've only done it on purpose once,” Rey confessed. “Usually it just has to... happen. And it hasn't yet. I kind of wished that it would,” she added, watching Leia, “but maybe he's too tired. Or he might not be alone. Or maybe he just doesn't want to right now.”

“Are these guesses, or things you can feel?” Leia asked, glancing up at her.

“Both, kind of. I can tell sometimes, but I haven't been trying to today. I've been avoiding it actually, because I know Ben isn't supposed to find out what we're doing here.”

Leia frowned, considering that, absentmindedly smoothing a hair back into place that was trying to come undone from her braids. Rey didn't interrupt her, wondering what she was thinking, if she was giving Ben the benefit of the doubt at all. But when Leia didn't say anything more Rey added, “I hope he's alright. I think he is.”

"What do you think he would do, if he found out that you're trying to build a new lightsaber?” Leia asked, glancing at Rey perceptively.

“Nothing,” Rey said honestly. “He might try to help, actually. He'd tell me what he knows, if he does know anything about it.”

“And nothing else?”

Rey smiled slightly. “I don't think that's allowed, at this point. If he wants me to come over to the First Order he has to give me an equal chance to get him over to the Resistance. No sabotage, no interfence.”

Leia took that in then shook her head slightly, turning away but only long enough to go to the edge of the ridge and climb up, carefully lowering herself to the stone next to Rey, letting her legs dangle off the side as Rey had. “I've been trying to imagine what the reaction would be, if you really did go to him; assuming he does what he says he can. Maybe it's wrong to say, or even think, but there is a part of me that hopes you do.” She shook her head again, frowning. “And the rest of me knows what a terrible blow it would be, for all of us. The Resistance is never one person but so much of what we can do, what we can promise, is shaped by the individuals who inspire the galaxy. You're already one of those individuals; seeing you go would be devastating for a great many people.”

“And what about him?” Rey couldn't help but ask, not sure if she should but unable to help it just the same. “If he came to join us? What would that mean to a great many people?”

“They'd probably think we were crazy,” Leia admitted with a chuckle. “Maybe they'd think the First Order had taken us over somehow.”

“And then?”

Leia's smile seemed to fail, slipping away from her as she cast her eyes downward, her feelings in the Force a heady mixture of trepidation, sadness, fear, and sorrow. “I can't pretend to know what would happen then. A lot of harm has been done, and a lot of hurt has been caused, by the man people know as Kylo Ren. Even if the war was won, and even if it was won with him among us, there will always be many who can never forget. And while war is still the daily reality of this galaxy it may not be possible for him to come back at all. Are you prepared for that, Rey?”

“I'm prepared to fight with him,” Rey answered, not sure what else to say. “I'm prepared to trust him. And I think we could win, if he was on our side. I think he would save the Resistance.”

“But we could not win without either of you,” Leia pointed out. “Without you at the very least. Rey, if the First Order does end up wiping us out and ruling the galaxy, which is still what my son intends, there will be nothing left with which to resist them. If he wavers, even for a moment, we will all be lost. And he has wavered so many times.”

“Not this time,” Rey replied, but she could feel that Leia wasn't convinced, wasn't even nearly convinced, at all. “It won't be like that again.”

“But is it worth risking the fates of everyone based on what you hope will come true?” Rey frowned but found she couldn't answer, looking away. It had been so much easier to agree to with Ben standing in front of her, feeling his confidence, his need, his hope. Now that they were on either ends of the galaxy, now that they hadn't seen or spoken to each other in days, it was harder to see why she'd agreed in the first place.

Was it just the crystal, eroding her faith in him as it was eroding everything else? She glanced at her pack, wondering. Or was it her, better understanding the reality of what she had promised?

“You need to be sure, Rey. And I don't think that you are,” Leia said, as if she could read Rey's mind.

“I believe in him,” Rey murmured. And it was true, but was it enough?

“I don't, Rey,” Leia said softly. “I wish that I could. But if my son wants to be saved he has had endless chances to find a way. We can't risk everything trying to do it for him.” Rey didn't respond, not sure what to say, or even what she was feeling herself, and Leia seemed to accept that, straightening up and stretching. “Well, I better carry on,” she said, letting herself down from the ridge back to the stone floor. “My apprentice is still out there somewhere. Think about what I've said,” she added, not looking back as she continued on her way.

“I will,” Rey promised, sure that at this point she would hardly be able to think about anything else.


	50. A Second Promise

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Renegotiation and an ultimatum

Rey found herself pacing again well after nightfall, despite spending the rest of the day at camp trying to distract herself from anything that wasn’t the crystal and the new lightsaber. After her conversation with Leia she’d made for the Falcon and worked out some of her stress practicing with her staff, then sat down to tackle the mechanical components of the lightsaber hilt in the hopes that when she did somehow succeed in refining the crystal it would only be the work of a moment to transform it into a functional weapon. R2-D2 helped with some of the finer detailing, beeping encouragingly at her as they worked, and as far as Rey could tell it seemed about as good as it was going to get. Or at least, so she hoped—she thought they’d lined the focusers up right but until the crystal was ready there was no way to be sure.

After they parted ways Leia did end up finding Ammu and Ani eventually and dragged them back to camp on strict orders not to go farther than a direct line of sight to the tent or the Falcon for the remainder of the day. Rey suspected they’d gotten quite a scolding this time around; they slunk silently off into the Falcon to hide almost the first second they had the chance, and did not emerge again. Leia only went to find them once more after that, to make sure they’d both gotten their rations portions when it was time to eat, but spent the rest of the day in camp with Rey and R2. She helped Rey apply a second layer of burn salve to her shoulders but other than that they didn’t interact much, for which Rey was grateful. She practiced with her staff again as twilight fell on the surface above, sinking their layer below into murky darkness, but despite succeeding in physically exhausting herself her mind stayed awake, grimly refusing to contemplate anything like sleep. Eventually she found herself leaving camp again and going out to the furnace, dark and cold, waiting for the next morning.

The Kyber crystal. Rey frowned stormily at the furnace’s closed door, feeling the Dark pull of the crystal at the edge of her mind as it sat in her pouch, waiting. If she could just refine the crystal, if she could just figure out how, all of this would be over. They’d leave the third moon of Lok and get back to the Resistance, back into the fight. Poe must have recruited enough people by now.

And if, in the meantime, Ben did what he’d insisted he would? If he really did take the First Order again? The thought made her pause, caught midway between hoping and fearing that that would be the case. By now he might have already done it. He might be back in control and eagerly waiting for their next Force bond, impatiently seeking her across the universe, expecting her to come to him. Their fate might already be decided and she didn’t even know it.

There was no point wondering, and no point continuing to stalk the empty furnace from the shadows. Rey turned away, about to make herself go back to camp, about to make herself go back to bed, and there he was. Right there in front of her, standing in the shadows of the fluted and twisting stone as if he’d been there the whole time, and something prickly and knotted in her relaxed with astonishment, with relief, unfurling and disappearing completely.

“Ben,” she said, the word sounding thick and unwieldy as her voice caught on its way out.

“Rey,” he replied, studying her. “Did you reach for the bond?”

“No.” She very, very deliberately had not. “You?”

“No. It must have opened on its own.”

“Been a while.”

“Yes,” he agreed, something about him lightening in the Force, a relief and a gladness so simple and unexpected that they made her throat tighten again. “How are you?”

She shrugged, then winced involuntarily as the motion tugged at the burned skin across her shoulders. Instantly Ben’s feeling in the Force shaded darker with concern. “Still in one piece,” she said anyway, knowing he would have no idea what had caused the reaction. “You seem about the same.”

“Essentially,” he agreed, his eyes trailing across her, trying to discover the source of her discomfort.

“Rose and Finn?”

“Fine. We’re on Hays Major. They’re contacting a group of local agitators to help us take the base. We should have it under our control by this time tomorrow.”

“Oh,” Rey said, not sure whether this was good news or not. Apparently he didn’t have the First Order back after all. Was she disappointed by that? She couldn’t decide. “Well, good luck, then. Be careful.”

Ben stayed silent, still studying her but seeming to have given up solving the mystery of her flinch, instead going watchful, almost tense. “There have been some developments on my end,” he said finally.

“Developments?” Rey repeated, frowning.

“Finn has a connection to the Force.”

Whatever she’d been bracing to hear next, it wasn’t that. “Finn?” she repeated, trying to catch up, her thoughts tumbling over one another as she grappled with the news. “Since when?”

“Since he met you, I suspect, or at least there have been some signs of it according to him. Likely it’s one of the reasons the Force led you to find each other. I don’t know if he can use it directly yet but he says it shows him things, bits of the future. He will probably learn to use the living Force as well, in time.”

Rey stared, at a loss for what to say. Every word was astounding, and utterly unexpected. She’d only recently had to account for the idea that other Force users, new Force users, were out there, ever since meeting Ammu; up until then she’d somehow focused on only herself and Ben, as if there was no one left in the universe that was like them. But being told someone she knew, someone she knew WELL, was also a Force user and she’d been unaware of it, was a revelation she hadn’t been ready for at all. “How did you find out?” she asked eventually.

“Accidentally. He told me once I detected he had a sensitivity. We’ve only managed to meditate together once so far but Rey…” It was Ben’s turn to hesitate, clearly searching for what to say. “I can’t be certain but I think he’s a Light side user.”

Oh. “Is that a problem, for you?”

“No. I grew up with Light users, I know how they train. I know how they train better than Dark users, in some ways.”

“You’re training him?”

“I didn’t have much of a choice. We’re about to go into battle and he’s had visions, or whatever they are, of what’s going to happen.”

“What kinds of visions?”

“There’s a specific stormtrooper he’s looking for, I don’t know.” Ben frowned, both his expression and his feeling in the Force laced with impatience and a little fatigue. “I don’t know much, Rey. It’s a feeling he has. We both think it’s going to be important somehow.”

It didn’t sound very specific- considering the fight Ben and the others were headed for was against the First Order it would have been far more surprising to hear that there were stormtroopers they DIDN’T have to be on the lookout for- but Rey decided not to make that particular observation out loud, studying Ben instead. There was something in her sense of him she couldn’t quite puzzle out, not so much a hostile feeling but an uncomfortable, defiant feeling, as though he’d been caught doing something he shouldn’t be. “Do you not like training Finn?” she asked, trying to tease out the source of Ben’s uncertainty.

“It’s not something I anticipated ever having to do.”

“Do you not want an apprentice? Is that it?”

He hesitated, something she couldn’t decipher in his expression, some sort of indecision, as though the question meant something different to him than it did to her. “I don’t think of Finn as my apprentice.”

“Ben…,” she sighed, not sure how to approach what she wanted to say, what she thought he might need to hear. “You’re not Luke, you know.”

He stared, blank with surprise. “What?” he finally asked.

“Just because you had a bad teacher that doesn’t mean you’re going to turn out to be a bad teacher, too. And Finn’s not a child.”

“I know that.”

“Then you don’t have to be worried about training him. It’ll be fine. You’ll be fine,” she said, smiling at him in what she hoped was an encouraging way, but something about it seemed to falter as she stepped towards him, wanting to comfort him and wanting also to acknowledge somehow, in some physical way, that he was HERE, right here, with her. As much as she knew she should seek out whatever it was that was making him second guess himself and resolve it, she couldn’t help but feel a need to be near him, disrupting her good intentions, and as she took another step forward she could tell he’d noticed.

“Rey,” he said, watching her come closer but still looking torn. “There’s something else.”

“Is it important?”

“It’s--well, yes.”

“Ben,” she said, almost pleaded as she reached him, reached out for him. For a moment she wasn’t absolutely sure if what she wanted would even work- they hadn’t tried to physically connect since the hut on Ahch-To, which at this particular moment seemed like it had happened a thousand years ago- but then she managed to brush her fingers across his sleeve, then his shoulder, then reached up to touch his face. His skin and clothes were cold, or maybe it was just that even at night the third moon of Lok was warm, or maybe it was a bit of both.

“Rey,” he sighed, his cheek under her palm but his hands still at his sides, not trying to move away but not helping to move things forward either. “We should stay focused.”

“I’ve been staying focused for days,” she contradicted, frowning, aware of the crystal in the pouch at her side even now. “I want to be with you.”

“I wish we could,” he murmured, his eyes shadowed more than ever as she leaned towards him, hesitated, then stood on her toes and brushed her lips across his. He put a hand on her hip automatically, steadying her, and it was just enough encouragement for her to lean in and kiss him properly.

“Rey,” he said again, his lips pressing her name against hers, then he finally gave in.

There was an anxiety to their need tonight, an edge about it, about them, something insistent and nearly bitter that wanted more, demanded more. Ben’s arms wrapped around her and he almost lifted her into the air with the force of his kiss, unyielding, uncompromising, not because he himself was less than gentle but because gentle wasn’t what either of them wanted right now. It took her back to the tunnel, to the loam wall he’d pressed her against, the darkness and then the red and burning light of his saber, throwing what they were doing, what they’d intended, into stark relief.

If there’d been something he could have pushed her up against tonight Rey almost wondered if the same thing would have happened all over again. The furnace was behind her, just a few steps away, but he couldn’t see it and she couldn’t let him. Instead she pulled him to her just as fiercely, just as forcefully, so that she could feel every line and curve of him under his clothing, the muscles of his shoulders, the curling hair against the back of his neck. She drank it in, and drank him in, and wished as hard as she could, with her hands and her lips and with everything in her, that for just this moment this could be all there was in the galaxy. Just him, and her, and their feelings, building between them, pulling them both together as though there weren't countless light years between them.

“Ben,” she gasped as he finally released her mouth, as his lips traced her cheek then down her jaw to her neck, pressing a kiss just below her ear.

“I know,” he murmured, and she wasn't sure if he did or didn't, this time. Her need for him- her unflinching and undeniable desire to have him, to have him NOW- was all but overwhelming, and she pushed back against it for a moment, trying to think. The crystal pulsed in her pack, almost alive again, but reacting to her? Or reacting to him?

He'd stopped kissing her and was instead just holding her to him, so tightly it was almost viselike, and she held him back and tried not to imagine, to wonder, to wish, her arms iron around him, her face buried in his shoulder, clamping down on whatever it was that was trying to make her spin out of control.

“Rey?” he asked, his arms loosening, trying to lean back, to see her again, questioning, seeking. He'd felt it, he must have. Across any amount of time and space he could still sense the Dark presence here with them that had never been here before. But when she leaned back too and managed to glimpse his face she saw that he was looking instead at her shoulder, brushing a suddenly hesitant hand across her burns, twice salved but still very obviously an injury she hadn't had before.

“Have you been fighting?” he asked as she visibly hesitated, as Ben moved his arms to wrap around her again but lower down her back, carefully avoiding the burned patches, clearly trying to imagine what kind of fighting she could be doing that would cause that kind of injury. And her shoulders were actually stinging a bit, she realized, even with the numbing salve to combat it. She'd been so caught up in Ben she hadn't noticed.

“I've been busy,” she answered, the closest she could safely come to the truth.

“But are you in danger?” She hesitated and he frowned, letting her go.

“Ben--.”

“I know. I'm not a Rebel.”

“I'm alright, mostly. I am. A little tired, but still in one piece.” He said nothing to that, only watched her, something in his eyes flat and dangerous. She stepped back towards him, not sure whether or not she should when he was in a mood like this. “Ben?”

“Our agreement. Do you still intend to do what you said you would? Are you going to come to me?”

“Of course,” she protested, hoping he couldn't feel her uncertainty. His eyes went darker still and Rey's heart sank. He'd felt it. Before she had time to try and think of something else to say, some way, any way, to recover, he swept her back to him in a crushing embrace, smashing his mouth to hers with a kiss so hungry and demanding and HIM that it drove every other thought from her mind and all but forced her response, dragging it out of her as she kissed him back. Suddenly her wish was granted and there was nothing in the whole universe but them, no other thought, no other existence except the fire he flooded her with, the heat, the dark and burning need between them that knew no half measures, that would not allow any bit of either of them to be withheld.

“I'm close, Rey,” Ben insisted to her, his teeth catching at her lip, then his lips themselves on her again, pressing, demanding, taking. “And if you don't come to me I'll come to you, wherever you are. I'm not going to settle for being apart from you again.” He leaned back, his dark eyes burning into hers. “The next time I see you, we finish this.”

And before she could catch her breath he released her, stepped back, and was gone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Fifty chapters!! Who would have guessed? Started out as a one-shot and now we’re fifty-shots in lol
> 
> Also, our poor protagonists. For being the main characters of the story they really don't get to spend that much time together.


	51. An argument, the crystal, and the wound

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rey accidentally finds a way inside

“You felt him.”

It was a statement rather than a question. By the time Rey returned to camp she wasn't surprised to see Leia sitting up on her cot waiting for her; what was a surprise was that Ammu and Ani had been drawn out of the Falcon and were waiting too, Ammu sitting next to Leia, Ani sitting next to him, grown tall enough that his head was level with Ammu's even so. Rey couldn't guess how much of Ben's visit the youngling and his akk dog might have been able to feel, exactly, but Leia, a much older and more experienced Force user, had probably been able to divine the broad nature of their conversation.

It was a good thing the lamps Leia had turned on were fairly dim, because Rey's cheeks and the back of her neck felt hotter than they usually did.

“He was here,” Ammu murmured as Rey stopped just within the circle of light, looking past her as though expecting to see Ben also step forward out of the dark, crouching slightly against Leia's side. “He was with you.”

“He was,” Rey agreed, setting her staff aside and sitting down on her own cot, suddenly tired as she hadn't seemed to be able to be at all when she'd left. “Now he's gone. It was just a Force vision, Ammu.”

“I'd say it was a bit more than that, Rey,” Leia contradicted, her expression drawn and a little forbidding. “What did he want?”

“Nothing, specifically. We didn't do it on purpose.”

“What did he find out?”

“Nothing,” Rey insisted a little more strongly, trying to resist the rising irritation she felt trying to color the words with a harsher tone. “He saw the burns on my shoulders but he assumed I'd been fighting.”

“He's coming for me,” Ammu said, his green face a slightly paler, more sickly yellow-green than the rest of him as Ani nudged in closer to his side, rubbing his armored head and shoulder against Ammu in a comforting way. “He wants to take me away.”

“No one is going to take you anywhere, Ammu,” Leia said, reaching across the cot to hug him, her frown equal parts anxiety and defiance. “That was a long time ago and it's never going to happen again. The Resistance will take care of you.” She meant well and in the Force Rey could feel Leia's determination and sincerity but Ammu was already too distracted by his own fear for it to reach him. If anything his uncertainty was increased, and he pushed away from Leia and fled in the direction of the Millennium Falcon, Ani in hot pursuit.

“I can't say I feel much better than Ammu about this, Rey,” Leia said, standing, and for the first time Rey caught sight of the belt Leia had strapped around her hips, twin blasters holstered on each side, definitely something she hadn't been wearing when Rey had left and Leia had been asleep. “It was all I could do not to come interrupt you two when I realized he was here.”

“Why didn't you?” Rey challenged, also standing, her staff in her hand even though she clearly remembered having put it down. Now she couldn't recall when or how she'd picked it back up but she couldn't deny that she was glad of the solidness, the familiarity of it, and also couldn't deny that she didn't mind Leia's somewhat alarmed glance at it as much as she probably should have.

“What are you doing, Rey?” Leia asked, her voice softer, almost cautious.

“I'm asking you why you didn't come stop us. If you hate him so much, and hate having him here so much, and hate us talking to each other, then why not come shoot at him instead?”

“I think we both know that you were doing a bit more than talking to each other.”

“Good,” Rey snarled, surprising them both again, her grip on her staff tightening as she pressed on. “I'm glad you know that I kissed him. I'm glad you know that he kissed me, too. We want each other. And I don't know if you can shoot him through the bond while he's here, but you can't shoot THAT.”

“Rey, this isn't you,” Leia cautioned, her eyes shadowed with concern but one of her hands drifting down to its corresponding blaster. “Your feeling in the Force-- it's unbalanced.”

“I don't care if it is,” Rey declared, feeling something else flicker in her at the same time, some doubt. What was happening? What was she doing? But just as quickly she recovered her surety, remembering that it was justified in a way it wouldn't have been otherwise, because it was on Ben's behalf. “I'm protecting him.”

“He's not here anymore, Rey.”

“I'm protecting him from how much you hate him.”

“I don't hate him,” Leia protested, a flash of shock and hurt going through her in the Force. “You know that I don't hate Ben. Rey, calm down.”

“I know,” Rey acknowledged after a moment, trying to think, but whatever tight feeling was in her wouldn't be sated, wouldn't go away. “I know that.”

“Rey...” Leia hesitated, looking her over, reaching for in the Force, a probe Rey wanted to slap away and just barely managed not to. “Do you have the Sith crystal with you?”

She did. Of course she did. Rey looked down at the pouch at her waist, realization finally surfacing through her hurt, her anger, her wrath, and flipped it open. A red light was burning inside, the crystal at the center of it, a light she could feel in the Force now that she was aware of it, Dark in both its nature and intent.

“Give it to me,” Leia said, snapping Rey out of her reverie, and she realized she'd been staring into the light of the crystal as though fascinated, or entranced. She looked up and saw Leia standing only a couple steps from her but couldn't remember hearing or feeling her move. “Rey, give me the crystal.”

“I want to,” Rey explained, to excuse why she somehow couldn't seem to do it. Her hands stayed at her sides, and her crystal stayed where it was, shining in her pouch. No, not her crystal, the crystal. The crystal Leia wanted.

“You don't have to touch it,” Leia said, taking another step closer. Rey fought down a sudden urge to raise her staff, to block Leia's approach, a nauseous feeling in the pit of her stomach. “Just take off the pouch, if you want to. Just take off the whole belt.”

Yes. That was a good idea. That was a good plan. Rey looked down at the pouch again, intending to do it, but didn't. Her head was swimming and her hands felt like lead, weighted down.

_Rey_. The word was projected into her head in Leia's voice. She looked up again but Leia hadn't come any nearer, still staying a step back, but one of her blasters was now unholstered and held down at her side. _Take off the belt_.

She should. She would. Rey frowned, keeping her eyes on Leia as she reached around with one had to the belt buckle. It was easier to do when she wasn't looking down, somehow, but she needed to use both hands to work the buckle's clasp and she didn't want to put down her staff.

“Could you take the staff? Please,” she asked Leia, not able to hold it out to her but able at least to loosen her fingers around it, to make it easier to take away. Leia hesitated, examining Rey, then reached out in the Force instead of physically, drawing the staff to her free hand. It went easily enough and Rey breathed a sigh of relief, putting her other hand to the belt buckle. She wanted to close her eyes to undo it so she could focus better but that seemed dangerous somehow so she kept them open, working the buckle by feel as the belt loosened. She let go and the belt fell away, the pouch going with it. As it hit the sand the crystal rolled out into the open and the strong red light it was emitting winked once, faded, and was gone.

Rey's knees hit the sand before she realized she was collapsing then she fell backwards, landing in the sand just like the crystal had, staring at the edge of the tent and beyond it the underside of this planet's crust, lost in the dark shadows of nighttime. Her chest was heaving as though she'd been running and something hurt inside her, something angry and unstable, wrenched to the side as if something else had tried to pry it free.

“Rey!” Leia exclaimed, and then she was there next to her, grabbing her hand, reaching for her in the Force. It felt odd, as though Leia could use the Force but somehow Rey could not, her own ability stripped from her, leaving her cold and a little empty. “Rey! Can you hear me?”

“Yes,” Rey choked out, realizing some of the sand had gotten in her throat somehow. She turned to the side, coughing again then clearing her throat twice, leaning over and spitting out the dust and grit.

“Are you alright?” Leia asked, her hand on Rey's shoulder, steadying her.

“I'm not sure,” Rey admitted. She didn't feel alright. She felt hollowed out, and at the center of her that greater instability remained. “I think... I think the crystal attacked me.” They both turned and stared at the crystal where it lay a few feet from them, as lifeless as any other polished, sparkly rock.

“This is my fault,” Leia said after a long moment, turning back to Rey and helping her sit up. “We should have taken more time to look for an unrefined Kyber crystal, instead of bringing this one to you, especially when you might already be wounded yourself.”

“We didn't have time,” Rey disagreed, wiping her mouth off with the back of her hand. “We still don't.”

“We can't keep trying with this one,” Leia insisted, turning Rey towards her so she could look her in the eyes. “Rey, I don't know what it might have done or tried to do to you but it scared me to see it, nevermind what it must have felt like to you. Whatever it was we can't risk that happening ever again.”

“We can. We have to. I know how to, now,” she added, glancing at the crystal. “Or I'm closer. When it was... effecting me I could see inside it. I could feel it, in a way I couldn't before.” She glanced at Leia, smiling. “I think I know how to get inside it, too. And if I can do that, I can fix it.”

“But Rey, what if it hurts you?”

“It might,” Rey confessed, getting to her feet then helping Leia up too, dusting sand off her clothes. “But I think I can get to it first.”

“And if you're wrong?”

“Let's hope I'm not,” she said, bending down and scooping up the crystal. It was hard to do without flinching, without jerking her fingers away at the last moment, but the crystal was cool to the touch and seemed utterly normal once again. Rey turned and saw Leia examining her, looking no less worried than before.

“I have to, if I want to be as good as him,” she said, voicing aloud what she was sure they were both thinking. “Without a lightsaber I can't match Ben, whether I'm wounded or not. And if I end up staying with the Resistance we might end up fighting again, and I'll need to hold him off. I hope we don't,” she added, crossing to the duracrete case and dropping the crystal inside before closing the lid. “I don't want to fight him and I don't think he wants to fight me either. Not for real. But if he's the First Order's Force user, and I'm the Force user for the Resistance, I need this blade. I need to make this work.”

“Could you fight him?” Leia asked, in a tone that almost made Rey wonder which answer Leia was hoping for. “Could you fight him really, if you had to?”

“I... I don't think I could hurt him again,” Rey confessed, her hands still on the duracrete case as she tried to imagine it, facing off against Ben after everything. “I could hold him off, or distract him, but I don't want to wound or kill him. Sometimes I wish I'd known him better, than night on Starkiller,” she confessed, glancing at Leia. “Other times I'm glad I didn't, because if I hadn't hurt him enough to knock him down we might not have gotten away. I don't know.”

“I don't want you to hurt him either, Rey,” Leia said, taking her belt off and setting it gently aside, its blasters still holstered. “I hope you're never in a situation where you have to.”

Rey nodded, only barely holding back a wince as she remembered Ben's voice, his eyes, the unmistakable threat of him through the bond moments ago. If he did come for her the Resistance would fight him, and they'd expect Rey to fight him too. And, agreement or no agreement, if Ben started killing Rebels again to get to her she had no idea what she would do then.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: as the saavy reader will have noticed, yes, this is essentially the same method by which she discovered a way into Kylo Ren when he invaded her thoughts during the interrogation scene in TFA. Two broken, Dark, and damaged things; of course Rey's going to use the same path to deal with both of them, especially when it worked so well the first time ;)


	52. Breach

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ren runs into trouble; or, trouble runs into him

He should have told her about Ammu. Sitting in the shadow of a scree pile Ren tilted his head back towards the cloud-covered sky, closing his eyes. Rey had had other priorities, and he had been predictably easy to distract the moment that was the case, but he still should have told her.

Had he just not wanted to? Had he used her conflicting intent as an easy excuse to avoid the rest of the confession? There was no way to predict how she might respond to the news. As far as he could tell she still hadn't made up her mind about the Dark side, and while he'd held out some hope that the strength of their connection would eventually earn him a vote in his favor it was bound to be complicated again once she knew a child was involved. And this child, just to make things that much worse. He might have had a chance with just about any other youngling in the whole of known space, but finding himself linked to the one Leia had already taken as her apprentice seemed almost cruel. No matter how many times he tried to think the issue through it was hard to imagine this was going to end any way other than badly.

His comms unit vibrated slightly against his skin, letting him know a message was incoming, and he touched his earpiece to turn it on. “Go ahead.”

“Are you good to transmit?” Finn's voice asked, his voice slightly muffled.

“Yes.” The scree pile he was currently keeping between himself and the base was well outside of their standard continuous monitoring zone, even if they were on alert protocol.

“We're on approach. Should be in position in plus two. You ready to move?”

Over two more hours, in the frozen landscape of what was left of Hays Major. “Looking forward to it,” Ren said, sincerely. “Your position?”

“Tunnels near the main gate. They've got a nice little set up here but it's a tight fit, I'll be happier once we're in the Base and can spread out. We're going to go for a head-on attack and draw them out as much as we can, should be able to buy you a decent window. I'll radio again when it's T-minus thirty.”

“Acknowledged.”

“Finn out.” The line went dead and Ren turned his earpiece off and settled in to wait, surveying the landscape before him. Countless haphazardly spaced scree piles, some barely hillocks but some taller than him, bore witness to the mine debris dumping ground this empty plain had become. A thin layer of fresh snow had fallen during the night but was now quickly melting off in the late afternoon sun, leaving behind a few black patches of clear, fragmented shale, a startling contrast to the otherwise blinding white that went on all the way to the distant cliffs that were also the northernmost border of Port Addis somewhere on his right. It wasn't the worst place to spend one hour, but he'd already been here several. The surprise bond meeting with Rey had improved things substantially, but now that that was done with he had little to do but meditate and try to draw some warmth his body. The sun was dipping toward the horizon, and if he'd guessed the timing right Finn and Rose attended to lead the attack right after sundown. It made sense strategically, but it promised him some discomfort in the meantime.

He'd been meditating for only a very little while before he realized that his environment might no longer be his most immediate concern. A coordinated group of humanoids was approaching from the north, coming up on him slowly, using the scree piles as cover in the same way he himself had done. They weren't in any particular formation yet but they seemed to have a general fix on his location-- apparently he hadn't been good to transmit after all.

Ren got to his feet quietly but stayed in a crouch, heading left behind a slightly more formidable snow-covered hillock, a good vantage point from which to take a look at the enemy. He stayed carefully within the bare patches of stone; if he left a snow trail they'd reach his former cover and be able to find him within minutes. He looked out across the series of gentle slopes, stretching in the Force, but couldn't feel anyone close enough to see quite yet and ducked back down to wait. For a moment he allowed his mind to wander again, closing his eyes, managing the disappointment and the accompanying surge of irritation this development brought. Always, always a complication, never a clear way through.

The sound of shifting scree brought him back to the present and he risked looking out again, staying low in the shadow of the immediately adjacent pile. It was a local, and from the vaguely familiar feeling of them as they came closer, one of the ones that had been pursuing him last night through the rabbit warren that was the western neighborhoods of Port Addis. Another approaching being, this one farther away on his right, also felt familiar, and another behind them, but there the sensation stopped. The rest of the group- and there seemed to be half a dozen more, now that they were close enough that he could tell their numbers more clearly- felt markedly different, both in their familiarity but also in their intent. They felt more disciplined, more focused, potentially military-- and almost certainly First Order.

Ren ducked down and continued left, trying to think. They couldn't possibly know who he was or they would have brought many, many more soldiers, but the First Order also wouldn't have come at all unless he was of interest to them somehow; it was hard to believe Henchbrao Base regularly wasted time and resources sending patrols out after every potentially problematic stranger to show up on Hays Major, or they'd do little else.

A blaster shot rang out as he crossed a gap between two piles again, narrowly missing his leg, and he had to use an emergency Force Push to send it wider than it should have gone. A couple more shots rang out but by then he was already safely undercover. His lightsaber waited at his side, all but aching to be drawn to his hand and put to the purpose for which it had been built, but he couldn't risk it and called his blasters to his hands instead.

“Unauthorized being!” a tinny, vocodered voice rang out as what was probably the patrol captain activated her helmet's speaker. “You have been identified as entering the Hays Minor region by means of an illegitimate transport. Surrender to the First Order and prepare to present identification.”

Ren swore under his breath. Someone had spotted the Ghost. He had to radio Finn but had no chance to now, not while his transmissions were being used to track him.

“Remove any weapons you are carrying and emerge with your hands up!” the captain demanded when he made no move to respond to her original orders. “Surrender to the First Order or we will be forced to fire!”

They already had fired several times, and that was hardly his main concern. He'd be pinned at this rate so he readjusted his wrap to make sure it covered his face and went left again, but the stormtroopers were circling already, guessing his trajectory from the movement he'd already made. They took a couple shots but didn't get too close, the local guides falling back to let the soldiers do their work. He had less than a minute before the captain gave the order to really press in and he'd be surrounded. Ren fell back, this time headed right, towards a scree pile behind him, firing as he went. Three shots followed regardless, one quite close but none he had to push away. It wouldn't last.

He crouched behind the pile, catching his breath, then moved to another that was covered from their line of sight. If he didn't want to kill the whole patrol, which was very likely to draw the attention of the Base, then he had only one viable way out, and it wasn't one he relished taking. He fell back again, then again, trading shots with the patrol, managing to make them maintain their position rather than moving forward.

Another shot, hitting the horizon line of his current pile just above his head, close enough that he could smell the superheated ozone of the hot plasma bolt as it left a charred burn mark in a patch of snow. He fell back again, as close to the Base's security perimeter as he dared to get, then broke left.

Fresh snow wasn't the easiest thing to run in, especially when it was melting on top of loose layers of fragmented stone, but Ren used the Force to keep his balance and to guard his back. He wove between the piles, ducking and slipping every time he encountered a patch of snow too large to completely avoid, putting distance between himself and the pursuing First Order units. Too much distance, and he realized it too late, all but skidding to a halt as he realized the locals were circling around to a position in front of him. They'd anticipated he'd run in the rough direction of Port Addis and were trying to catch him between the two groups, the patrols falling back to let their guides take point on the trap.

Ren dove behind a pile, considering the three would-be assailants from the night before just as they caught sight of him. They chittered excitedly in a local language he wasn't familiar with, blaster bolts lighting the snow to his left and above briefly red, sizzling char marks into the side of the scree pile. He didn't wait to let them get their bearings, dodging around the right-hand side and going straight for their line.

It wasn't what they'd expected; thieve's logic, that he would hide or run, not stand or charge. Bolts rained down around him but all unaccountably missed, and they panicked as he returned fire, their show of discipline crumbling, bunching together instinctively and making their group an easier target. On head popped up and Ren dropped to a knee, taking the shot, feeling in the Force the renewed surge of fear from the other two as that local dropped back to the ground, dead. The remaining two were considering making a break for it themselves and he made good use of their moment of distraction, coming around to the other side of the scree pile and moving up on their left. By the time they looked for him again he was gone; before they could identify where to he'd drawn level with them and ducked out from under cover, blocked by a large pile enough to risk using the Force to another pile down on the locals. They were buried with short, pained cries, enough of an opening for Ren to shoot them both for good measure, and he continued on, passing the three fallen informants as he went.

The stormtrooper captain behind him was shouting through her mic, too far away for him to pick up more than, “Surrender-- prepare to-- First Order-- now!” Ren kept moving, trying to think. The patrols were far enough back that they would have lost track of his exact position by now, expecting the locals to have captured them. He'd bought himself another two minutes at most, and it wouldn't last.

He circled, almost at a dead run, staying low as he rounded the corner of Henchbrao Base, looming above him, the early evening sun reflecting off the snow at an angle and painting the durasteel a dull bronze. He had to get out of range of the patrol before they reached the bodies and radioed in his last known position. They'd wonder where he'd gone, but they wouldn't think he'd gone there. The Base had a wall perhaps ten meters high, mounted with guns that he doubted had seen much use since the initial colonization of this planet. The walls were smooth but thin, a shell of hardened bolt-resistant metal plating over a duracrete and metal frame. It wasn't a viable avenue of escape, not for anyone but him.

He could feel the patrols find the bodies just as he holstered his blasters and headed straight for the wall. The corner gunner's turret would protect him from their line of sight and the top was quiet for now, manned only by the daily three patrols of two. Ren was in the Base's shadow but still two of the patrols noticed him when he was already nearly to the perimeter's foundation, crossing the artificially-leveled killing ground, drawing his power in the Force back to himself and taking the chance that they might just shoot him and he'd have a harder time countering if they did. There was no other choice; he would need all of his strength in the next few moments.

Two guards leveled their weapons at him and two activated their mics but no one fired, nor did they call it in. One lone madman, running at the Base empty-handed? Their captain would roundly berate them for raising the alarm over something so trivial. They had had a breath to respond and they hadn't. It was too late now.

At the last possible moment Ren called his lightsaber to his hand and leapt, using a huge movement in the Force and his momentum combined to take him forward and up. There was no chance he could reach the top of the wall in one but he didn't need just one; just before he impacted the metal plating he fired his blade, stabbing down at an angle, burning a hole through casing that might be proof against blaster bolts but was decidedly less resistant to a saber. It gave him the purchase he needed to swing himself up and around, and with another surge of Force energy he landed on the patrol catwalk, hitting the button to sheathe his blade again as he went.

“What the--?!” one of the stormtroopers exclaimed, but that was all any of them had time for as they forgot their mics completely and grabbed for their blasters instead. Ren called his blasters back to his hands at the same time, dodging their shot with a roll then firing back as he righted himself. He took out three of the six on the first round, the fourth on the second, and by then the last patrol only barely had time to respond to him. One shot felled each of them and the last stormtrooper body hit the catwalk at an angle, rolled to the side, and fell down to the muddy ground within the Base with a resounding clatter.

Ren took a long, steadying breath and then another in the sudden silence, staying on one knee, using the Force to ensure no one had noticed him yet. As far as he could tell no one had but it wouldn't last; there was no way he'd hide six bodies before someone saw them, and certainly not with one already sprawled out down below. He was in, just two hours too early.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: yes, I was stuck on this scene for a long, long time. It was tricksy, and so is what comes after. Bear with me, patient readers, I promise we're getting there
> 
> My tumblr:
> 
> https://how-do-i-turn-this-thing-off.tumblr.com/


	53. Ren inside the Base

It was a strange and keenly unsettling feeling for Ren, to walk a First Order Base as an enemy. Firing on his own soldiers had not been a task he'd relished, either today or when Hux had initially moved against him, but even that discomfort was entirely different from the genuine disquiet of navigating a Base that felt as familiar to him as anywhere he'd ever been. First Order Bases were laid out according to the same basic structural design no matter where they were in the galaxy, so even though he'd never been to Henchbrao specifically he knew its layout backwards and forwards and only had to pay a little attention to monitoring for any non-standard patrol arrangements. Henchbrao was a Class P, Specification II Base (primarily Production, less than 2000 permanent personnel), meaning its HQ would be positioned nearby in the middle of the north wing at the highest point of the Command facilities. An old-fashioned design that didn't take into account an aerial attack and that Hux had been railing against since Ren had known him, but generally effective.

The alarms sounded well after he'd already made his way inside through the ground entrance for B and C Barracks, which were empty as anticipated, their stormtroopers on rotation at this time of day. Six of the bunks he passed probably belonged to the three patrols he'd killed, but he didn't think about that. The attack siren went off right before he left C and he crouched by the door into the Base proper, trying to decide what to do. Standard operations demanded patrols sweep room by room, inwards from the perimeter, and he wasn't as good at manipulating minds as Rey. He might be able to turn the focus of a few Port Addis street urchins, but not of career soldiers specifically looking for him.

A bank of refreshers on the left caught his eye and he entered one, locking the door behind him and checking the ceiling. There-- four months ago FO Command had ordered new alteratmospheric expansions to planet-bound Base refresher filters, requiring a much wider general intake to be installed to allow for improved air circulation. For once Ren had a chance to appreciate the exhaustive nature of the daily general reports he'd had to sit through after replacing Snoke, as well as Hux's endless fascination with forcing him to all but repeat back each minute detail; he'd assumed that it was part of Hux's campaign to either eventually get himself killed purely for being annoying or to get Ren to despair and cast off the job of Supreme Leader entirely, but either way it was the only reason he'd remembered that the new intakes were big enough for a person to climb through, even a person as comparatively large as him.

The door to Barracks C slid open, announcing the arrival of the patrol, their heavy steps muffled from inside the refresher. Ren ignored them, climbing onto the lid of the lavatory and carefully using the Force to apply downwards pressure from inside the air shaft, catching the intake filter at an uncomfortable angle as it fell. 

“No rats in here,” one soldier reported to the other, his voice mechanized by his vocoder. “Lockers?”

“Nothing,” the other stormtrooper reported in a bored tone as Ren shifted the filter to the lavatory lid and just barely managed to keep from swearing as he saw up the air shaft. The filter might have been larger than before, but someone at Henchbrao had decided to cut corners and had neglected to widen the air shaft itself to the same proportions. To say this was going to be a tight squeeze was an understatement; he would have had more room being squeezed into a human-sized sausage casing compared to inside this duct.

“Refreshers look good,” the first stormtrooper reported to the second, doors banging quite close to Ren as each was checked. He'd barely managed to squeeze his arms and shoulders into the air shaft when the stormtrooper tried his door, banging against this one too when he found it locked. “Hey! Patrol, open up.”

“Could be the wiring,” the second stormtrooper suggested to the first when Ren made no reply, sounding only marginally more interested than he had before. “I swear I've put in at least three work orders already about the wiring in C.”

“Well I can't just shoot off the lock, they'll take it out of my credits,” the first pointed out, sounding irritable. Ren held his breath to fight off a sneeze as his progress kicked up the fine layer of dust clinging to the sides of the intake and dragged himself upwards a little farther, so that the opening to the refresher was about level with his navel.

“I'll call for an MB unit, there's usually one on this level.”

“Wait--!” the first gasped, and there was a shuffling sound at the door. “I thought I heard something.”

Ren hesitated, still hanging out of the air shaft from the hips down as outside the refresher the two stormtroopers went silent for a long, expectant moment.

“What did you hear?” the second asked the first, his voice sounding oddly familiar to Ren now that it was tinged with slightly more interest in the proceedings.

“I don't know, like something moving. Hey!” the first shouted, banging on the door again. “If there's someone in there we're under attack orders, you have to open up!”

“Could just be someone dodging patrol.”

“Could be the rat! Get that MB unit in here!”

Ren pulled himself forward with greater urgency, squeezing himself into the tight confines of the air shaft, grating against his shoulders and his hips and knees as he continued up. His arms were trapped above his head in this position, the rest of his body all but useless, dangling in space as he went. He'd only managed to get in to about the ankles by the time he heard the droid arriving outside, beeping out a query.

“Unlock this door,” the first stormtrooper ordered sharply. Ren bent his knees as much as he could to pull his feet the rest of the way in and closed his eyes, concentrating. The Force was with him but he'd expended quite a bit of strength invading the wall of the Base in the way he had, and between that and the extremely close confines he was all but trapped in he could feel his focus wavering. Still he managed to reach out and gently, noiselessly pick up the filter.

The droid was at the door, it's multi-tool engaging with the lock. Ren had seconds.

“Ten credits it's the wiring,” the second stormtrooper remarked to the first.

“Do you ever shut up?” the first demanded.

The door clicked, the lock disengaging as the intake filter drifted sedately upwards. Ren's senses were so expanded he could feel the exact moment the MB unit rolled backwards out of the way, then the stormtroopers stumbling against its casing as they barreled forward, blasters up. The filter slid back into place just as they swept the room and pointed their blasters at the ceiling.

Silence. Ren tried to feel their general emotions and simultaneously tried not to expend too much energy doing it, his knees still uncomfortably bent, squeezed into an absurd rendition of a frozen diving pose. After a breathless moment their flare of excitement washed away, dropping back to disappointment and, on the part of the first stormtrooper, irritation.

“If you even say the word 'wiring' I swear I'll shoot you,” he warned his patrol partner, who had been about to do just that. The MB droid beeped another polite query. “Oh, I don't care,” the stormtrooper responded. “Sit in B and make sure the rat doesn't come in through the barracks, I'm going back to dinner.”

“Might as well,” the second agreed, and Ren dragged himself that final few inches forward and up as both parties left, the droid to monitor the barracks next door, the patrol out the door they'd come in through.

“Sloppy,” Ren commented to himself the moment it was safe to do so. The droid wouldn't be able to hear him from B unless he really made a racket, and for the moment it seemed he was safe enough. He withdrew his senses back into himself, letting go of the Force, grateful for the respite. He bent his elbow, just barely able to maneuver enough to get his hand in next to his head, touching his ear to activate his comms. There was no danger the new signal would be detected from within the Base; a Class P Base regularly had more active signals up at any one time than some small planets.

“Finn, receiving?” he murmured. There was a moment of static then Finn's voice came online.

“You've done something, haven't you?” he part asked, part demanded. In the background Ren could hear the Base sirens still going off; the others must be quite close to the entrance.

“Someone tagged the Ghost as illegal transport and tipped off Base Command,” Ren replied. “They hired some locals and came after me so I had to move. I'm in the Base.”

“What?!" Finn exclaimed, and Ren heard a muffled sound of sudden movement as though the news had made him jump to his feet. "Where in the Base?”

“Barracks C.”

“They haven't found you on sweep?” Finn asked, and even without the Force Ren could all but feel Finn running through First Order protocols in his mind, reviewing attack patrol patterns.

“No.”

“Where'd you hide?”

“Air shaft.”

“Which air shaft?”

Ren closed his eyes for a moment, uselessly wishing he was addressing the disciplined soldier Finn used to be. “Refresher.”

There was silence, then a muffled, incredulous snort of mingled relief and amusement. “You couldn't get up those shafts with a tub of Purrgill grease and boost rockets strapped to your feet.”

“Well, I have.”

“Are you stuck?” Finn asked, his tone verging very nearly on shameless glee.

“Finn,” Ren reminded him humorlessly.

“Okay, I won't tell Rey. Might tell Poe, though.” Ren did not reply to this, waiting for something of value to be said, and after a long moment Finn sighed expansively. “Guess you really are a Rebel now, if you're willing to hide up air shafts. We're lined up to go but this lot will still want to wait until after sunset. You good until then?”

“How long?”

Finn went silent again and in the background Ren heard a short, indistinct conversation, then he returned. “Maybe forty. We were going to wait longer but if you're already in I don't think we need to. Are you going to be able to move before then?”

“Not sure. They've left a droid to pick up their holding position but it's in B.”

“Sloppy,” Finn commented, and Ren felt an odd flush of something like kinship with the Rebel. “What kind of droid?”

“MB unit.”

“Standard programming?”

“Should be,” Ren replied, realizing what Finn was getting at. “Update might have already gone through though.”

“Well we've got forty on our end, either way. If you're still in the refresher shaft once we get in we'll dump some fuel on you from one deck up 'til you slide out.”

“Funny.”

“See, I knew you knew that word. Anything else?”

“If you can, send someone to check on Chewie and the Ghost.”

“Will do,” Finn replied, all humor suddenly gone from his voice. “Have you been able to reach out that way? Did you feel anything?”

“No. Well, I can feel that he's alive. But if the First Order's taken a sudden personal interest in stowaways it might mean that they caught Chewie and figured out that it's likely to be Rebels.”

“I'll try and send a message back to Addis, get one of them down to the docks.”

“Thanks,” Ren said, reaching back to his ear.

“And also-- watch yourself while you're in there. We need you.” Ren hesitated but nothing more was forthcoming.

“You too,” he replied, switching off his comms then waiting for a moment in the dark, breathing, thinking. Once this Base and its embargo fleet was taken he'd need to shift the Command structure around a bit, make sure he had people he could trust in key positions. It wouldn't be a popular move to put a Rebel in as a First Order officer- with either side, maybe- but if he could somehow convince Finn to stay on it'd be worth it to be certain of at least one of the people by his side. But at the same time, had it really come to that? Had he fallen so far as to regard a man who had already betrayed the First Order once as more worthy than real First Order officers of personal confidence, of consideration, based so clearly on attachment more than reason? And even if Finn had volunteered for this mission, was it likely at all that he'd be even slightly inclined to remain under Ren's command?

Ren shook his head at himself, gathering the Force and reaching downward. There were too many distractions in his head these days, far too many- Finn, Rose, Chewie, Rey- but in the meantime this shaft so tight it was compressing his chest inward, and he had to get out of it and get back into the fight for any of the rest of what was going on to make a difference.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: I really couldn’t resist the classic close call of a Rebel trying to hide from the enemy and barely making it in time. It came off fairly well, I thought :)


	54. The Return of Kylo Ren

Somehow getting out of the air shaft was more difficult than getting in had been, and Ren couldn't tell if it was because he was that much more tired or merely no longer in immediate danger. It had been a little while since he'd expended a significant amount of strength in the Force and doing so now made him feel imperceptibly more sluggish than it should, slightly shakier than he would have expected. He made a mental note of the difference, resolving to practice the forms he was always reminding Rey of a little more himself, and expended another small Force push that allowed him to drop down onto the lid of the refresher. He tried to do it quietly, aware of the droid in the next room as he replaced the overlarge filter in its position disguising the much narrower intake. When he was in charge of this place he'd be having a stern word with maintenance about that.

The MB unit was in B Barracks where it had been left, facing toward the doors leading to the outer perimeter and the wall, but it swiveled its slightly pointed top-like dome towards him as he approached, uncovering his face with one hand while keeping the other free next to its corresponding blaster holster just in case.

“Do you know who I am?” Ren asked the droid as its main lens took him in, flicking back and forth between red and white, processing. After a moment it turned its body all the way around to face him and whistled in a respectful way. Ren relaxed, letting go of the portion of the Force he'd called up to blast its main power circuit just in case; his droid might not be perfect but he could still recognize his proper title when he heard it.

“What's your designation?” he asked, closing the rest of the gap between them and kneeling down to check the droid's serial. “MB-30?” The droid whistled an affirmative. “Alright, MB-30, I need you to do a few things for me,” Ren decided, standing to his feet. The droids' second acknowledgment was noticeably perkier and Ren found himself wondering if the MB units had been modeled maybe a little too closely after the old R2 line. Certainly R2-D2 had never met a bit of trouble he couldn't get himself into, but considering that gave Ren an idea. 

“How many MB's are there in the Base?” he asked. MB-30 replied that there were at least a dozen.

“And the nearest powerbank?” Ren asked, looking toward the door to B Barracks. MB-30 replied that it was exactly where he'd expected it to be, two corridors down at the base of the main Command liftbank. “I need you to get there and relay my orders to the other MB's.”

MB-30 acknowledged this with an excited back-and-forth tilting motion on his hydropins, clearly only waiting for orders. Ren considered for a moment, trying to remember exactly how long it had been since Finn said the militia group waiting outside needed another forty minutes before beginning their attack. Ten minutes, maybe. So he needed a distraction long enough to bridge that gap that would yield maximum output, but minimum damage. Chaos, rather than carnage. “I need some lines cut within the Base,” he decided out loud, running through different operating systems in his mind. “Temporarily disable all automated defense systems, especially anything mounted on the external wall. Also blast doors, remote monitoring, and any defense support aerials.” Not all of which might actually be in place, considering how remote Henchbrao was and how little the Base's capabilities had been able to deter him, but it was worth listing just in case. “Basic power grid lines,” Ren continued, “and lines of any connected docks. I don't want anything taking off for a while. Cut comms, nothing outgoing. Leave light and sound alarm systems. Ignore any order to bring systems back online that doesn't come from me. Get all that?” he asked looking at the droid.

MB-30 was silent for a brief moment, processing, then beeped a respectful query. “Only shut off generators if you have to, but don't infringe on the main power core,” Ren replied. “We need to bring everything back up as soon as possible at a moment's notice. Tell the other MB's to carry out the order twenty-five minutes from now. And open the main gate,” he added, his tone somewhat more grim. He hated to do it even now but it was necessary for the move to be decisive, and at this point he couldn't afford anything less.

MB beeped an affirmative and rolled out to make sure everything went according to plan. Ren followed once MB was gone, settling down to wait in the entryway between barracks on the off chance that a random sweep would come through from either side that he would have to respond to.

Twenty minutes before he would have to act; before he would have to instigate an attack, on his orders, against his own Order. He closed his eyes for a moment, brushing his hair off his forehead, his fingers coming away slightly damp with sweat. This was exactly the quiet interim moment he hadn't been looking forward to, the minutes before the action when the last thing he wanted to do was think but thinking was the only thing available to him.

War was coming. Real war, not just the hit-and-run skirmishes with the Resistance. They could field maybe a couple hundred at a time, while the First Order had thousands. He let out a quiet breath, tilting back his head then stretching out his neck, his shoulders, his back. War in some capacity had been his life from the moment Luke had raised a saber to him. He'd believed at some point that a short period of calculated brutality would bring every remaining world under the power of the First Order and that would end all of it. What his role would be then, he'd never given much thought. Snoke's enforcer, probably, sent out to system after system to cut down any challengers. That wouldn't have been much of a fight. He would have been an executioner more than anything.

Now he was himself Supreme Leader- or at least, would be again very soon- and had anything really changed at all? If anything this factionalism would make things worse.

And Rey. He stood, discarding the sand-colored robes that had hidden him before, leaving them in a heap on the floor. Rey was no one's executioner, that he knew. She would not accept being the Kylo Ren to his Snoke. In some ways making her promise to join the First Order now, the way it was, could prove to be more dangerous than leaving her to her own devices. One misstep on his part and he might make her his enemy all over again. But for now he hadn't been able to come up with any better plan, and he already worried he was out of time. That earlier Force bond had not been promising, and if he was going to get to Rey while he still had any chance of convincing her to come with him he needed it to be soon. Taking one Base and one embargo fleet wasn't an issue but there were many, many more Bases and fleets to come. He didn't dare fail. The Resistance had tolerated him once, and briefly; they wouldn't do so again.

Above his head the barracks’ lighting panels set into the ceiling flickered once, then twice, then went out completely. Ren called his saber to his hand, waiting expectantly facing the door leading into C Barracks from the main base as the emergency wall-mounted lighting strips flared red and yellow and an alarm began to sound. The patrol that should have been in holding position here should now be on their way back, but after several protracted moments of listening to the siren wailing on his own Ren decided either their dinner really did mean more to them than their duty or they had been manually diverted elsewhere. In the Force the corridor didn't feel too busy, and the attack at the gate should draw many more stormtroopers off as they realized what was happening. He put a hand to his ear, checking his comms, but all he got was flat static. If the MB's had done their job- and it very much appeared as though they had- there would be no outgoing messages at all, and he couldn't ask for a better opportunity than that. He crossed to the door then hesitated before also discarding his blaster belt. He didn't need it. It was as much a part of his disguise as the clothing had been.

The corridor was also lit red and yellow, a haze of vaporized coolant creeping across the floor like heavy mist, suffusing everything in an odd, dreamlike haze. Ren didn't remember giving an order to cut the cooling units too but apparently the MB's had seen fit to do so anyway, proof positive that yes, they were modeled a little too closely after the R2 line after all. Then a patrol of four rounded the corner at a run heading his way and he fired his lightsaber. In a way it was a relief. The answering blaster bolts, the swell of the Force within him and around him as he moved, cutting the first set of bolts down, deflecting the second set back at his opposition. The simplicity of the fight as they stumbled, confused, as they realized, but the barrels of their blasters stayed up and he used a Force push from his free hand to throw them back. More came up the corridor behind them and he had to use his saber blade again and again, against ten opponents, against twenty, the confusion prohibiting any thought from them of surrender as they took up defensive positions against him automatically. Even so it didn't take too long to reach the powerbank where MB-30 was waiting, multi-tool plugged into the system, wreaking havoc. Ren stood between the droid and the troopers closing in on them both, at least thirty or more now, his saber a whirl and his mind, for once, blessedly distraction-free. He gathered the Force in another punishing push, feeling it siphon away a little more power as he swept it sideways, following the blazing path of his lightsaber, knocking the first two ranks of stormtroopers off their feet.

“Enough!” Ren snapped above the clatter as they fell, standing firm and holding up a warning hand. The stormtroopers that still could were forming up, their blasters brought to bear on him, but finally no one fired. “Lower your weapons,” he ordered, holding the lightsaber out on display at his side, the red blade painting all the vapor around it a glowing red as well, as though they could have missed it either way.

“Supreme Leader?” one of the soldiers at the front asked tentatively, his barrel dipping slightly but his blaster still essentially up.

“I don't like having to repeat myself,” Ren said coolly, wondering what lies, exactly, the planet-bound First Order had been fed. The same Hux had told the fleet, that he'd defected to the Resistance? Some other new nonsense? It turned out not to matter. Faced with the very real, physical being of the Supreme Leader before them one by one the barrels dropped, then the stormtroopers, as though suddenly remembering themselves, went down on one knee, their helmets angled towards the floor.

“Forgive us, Supreme Leader!” a stormtrooper displaying a captain's badge bleated. “Forgive us! We-- we were not expecting you.”

“That is evident,” Ren said sarcastically, sweeping the area in the Force. There were other soldiers nearby, but none immediately on their way here. He pointed his blade at the captain. “Report.”

“Sir!” she acknowledged crisply, jumping back to her feet. “That is-- the base is under attack, sir.”

Ren genuinely had to pause for a moment before replying, summoning what little patience he had available to him. “I had noticed that,” he pointed out, resisting the urge to gesture to the chaos all around them. “Report on conditions otherwise.”

“Con- conditions?”

“I assume you've received some interesting news from General Hux.”

Even under her armor Ren could see the trooper swallow hard. “Yes, sir.”

“I have not been in communication with the First Order in some time. I would like to know what that news was.”

“The Su-- the General, sir, said that the former Supreme Leader- that is, yourself, sir- was, well, a traitor, and dead. Sir.”

A traitor AND dead. That was a bit hasty of him. Ren took in the news for a moment, unable to help an unexpected flush of dark humor as he remembered how very long he'd been considered dead by the Resistance in much the same way. It had been convenient for others to call him dead long before today. “I do not feel dead,” Ren commented a little more lightly than he'd meant to, then remembered himself. “How did I die?” he asked, glancing back at the captain.

“The Resistance executed you, sir. General Hux communicated that you'd been tricked into joining up with them under false pretenses. But it was a trap and they shot you, sir.”

Insulting. Extremely insulting. How many Rebels would it take to successfully shoot him to death? More than they had now, he was all but certain, though Rey, Poe, and Finn together might be able to get the job done if Rose succeeded in destroying his lightsaber beforehand, as she'd once threatened to do. “That did not happen,” Ren informed them, gesturing for them to rise back to their feet. “I did not join the Resistance, and they obviously didn't kill me. General Hux has decided that it's time he took control of the First Order for himself, as evidenced by the fact that he's declared himself Supreme Leader, hasn't he?”

“Yes, sir,” the captain agreed, seeming very relieved that Ren was taking the news so well.

“It was unwise. Four of you will accompany me to Command,” he ordered, sheathing his lightsaber blade and turning back to the control panel. “We'll see which way this base will go.”

“With you, sir,” the captain replied, motioning for three others to form up with her. “With you, of course.”

“Good,” Ren commented, resisting the urge to add a self-indulgent bit about how once again the value of true military discipline had been demonstrated. He himself could do with some discipline, he realized. Joking asides, while common in the Rebel ranks, were not actually encouraged among well-trained soldiers.

“Thank you, MB-30,” he commented to the droid who still waited by the powerbank, multi-tool engaged. “Good work. Restore power to this liftbank.” The droid beeped an affirmative and a moment later the doors to the nearest lift, which had been opening and closing on a continuous loop, opened and stayed that way. “Send it up to Headquarters,” Ren ordered, entering the lift with the four stormtroopers close behind him, their captain taking up support position at his left shoulder. “Just this one. Keep all the others grounded.” MB-30 acknowledged, the doors closed, and as the emergency lights continued to shine yellow and red around them the lift began its slow ascent.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Sometimes as an author you know in your head what you want to write and a general outline of how things need to go, but when you’re facing down the concept of writing an ACTUAL WAR you kind of wonder where, exactly, all that blind self-confidence originally came from


	55. A victory and a loss

Ren had expected to be met with at least a token amount blaster-fire once he reached Headquarters, but was surprised and impressed by the ten full units arrayed in front of the sealed blast doors, a destroyed MB unit lying near the controls, multi-tool still out. He fired his lightsaber and moved quickly but not quickly enough, and one of the stormtroopers with him fell as the others sheltered behind the sides of the lift. Ren ignored them, stepping over the body, his blade a whirl of light as some of the stormtroopers in front of him hesitated, some of them lowering their gun as much in response to the sight of their fellow soldiers firing on them as to Ren himself. Those that didn't hesitate he quickly dispatched. He'd been feeling merciful before but the drain of the Force was beginning to wear on him and he was not feeling merciful now.

“Stand down,” he ordered once the shooting had stopped, and the stormtroopers that were left did so-- hesitantly, but they did so nonetheless. Ren kept his blade out just in case and approached the blast doors as stormtroopers scrambled out of his way, the remaining three members of his token honor guard from the level below at his back. Standard durasteel frame filled in with a duracrete core. He could burn his way through if he absolutely had to but frankly he didn't feel like it.

“That's enough, don't you think?” he commented, glancing up at the senor array he knew was trained on him. “Whatever you've heard was a lie. I'm taking command of this base and its fleet. Open the doors; end this now.”

Silence greeted this offer and he looked back at the doors, considering his options. As long as he had MB-30 and the remaining MB's still blocking transmissions the officers inside HQ weren't really a concern. It was annoying not to have access to their control boards, but not significantly problematic. As if in answer to his thoughts the lift doors behind him opened again and MB-30 rolled out, beeping a slightly more cheerful greeting than military protocol recommended.

“MB-30, can you get me through this door?” Ren asked, turning towards the droid as stormtroopers hastily scrambled out of the way again, letting the unit through. The droid made some interested, exploratory sounds, approaching the door and examining it, tilting forward and back as its main lens flipped colors meditatively. Before it decided, however, the door hissed and jolted, then the two halves began to part of their own accord. Ren waited, saber still out, half-expecting to be met with more blaster-fire. Instead he found a room of First Order officers already going to their knees, all but one, a woman who stood to attention between him and them, the tabs displaying her rank as Base Commander clear upon her chest.

“Commander,” Ren acknowledged, approaching her. No, she was not at attention precisely, nor at parade rest. She was just... standing, hands clasped in front of her, watching him advance. He half expected her to reveal a hidden weapon and try for a surprise shot at him, but a quick scan in the Force showed no duplicitous or murderous intent.

“Supreme Leader,” she replied as he stopped just shy of a meter from her.

“I understand you've been supplied with false information. I am neither a traitor nor dead.”

“I've lost good soldiers today,” she responded, looking unimpressed by this declaration, which he could only reluctantly admire given the circumstances. “All of this was you?"

“All of this was me.”

“And the rabble down there?” she continued, jerking her head behind her in the vague direction of the broad window overlooking the main gate. “That's also you?”

“It is.”

She took that in, examining his face in a way that made him feel as though he was somehow the one under dubious scrutiny rather than the other way around. “You'll want to execute me, I expect,” she stated after a long moment.

“Not at the moment, no.”

“Henchbrao Base fell under my command.”

“Henchbrao Base reaffirmed it's loyalty to the Supreme Leader under your command. So far,” Ren added, surveying the room. The other officers were trying to keep their heads down while also watching this exchange with quite a bit of anxiety, understandably so. “I'm not interested in executions,” he informed the room as a whole, looking back at the Commander. “I want the Hays Major fleet contacted, and the other bases on Hays Major as well. Any orders from a Supreme Leader other than myself are to be ignored. We adopt a closed-circuit system of our own. Adjacent systems and their fleets will follow. Defectors will be dealt with.”

“And the current attack?” the Commander asked, taking this in stride.

“Disengage. MB-30, put me through on this frequency,” he told the droid, turning to it and handing it his earpiece. “I'll also give the order to stand down. We'll bring them up under terms of ceasefire.”

“'Up'?” the Commander repeated, her eyebrows finally climbing skyward. “Up here?”

“It would be the most efficient solution,” Ren pointed out. Her pursed lips still thinned substantially. “Is there anything of which I should be aware?”

“It is unlikely, if they remain armed, that their arrival here will be a happy occasion.”

“If they are told to surrender their arms it is unlikely they will agree to a truce at all.”

“There have been multiple engagements with the Base that have gone poorly for the local... militia,” she replied, using what he imagined was a far more polite term for this enemy than was usual.

“Commander, I can't tell if you understand the current situation,” he said, turning toward her so he faced her squarely, his blade still out and crackling at his side. “General Hux has led a coup against me and others loyal to me. Henchbrao Base began the day as one of hundreds of Class P bases just like it, and will end the day as the temporary High Command of the First Order. The local 'militia' will be treated with here and now so that we can concentrate on eliminating Hux and whoever sides with him. Is that in any way unclear?”

Her eyebrows jumped another fraction upwards but she replied with an even, “No, sir.”

“Then relay my orders. MB-30?”

The droid beeped an acknowledgment, holding Ren's earpiece back out to him.

“Good,” Ren replied, putting it back in his ear and turning it on. The Commander nodded to one of the officers behind her, who jumped up and activated her own comms system to transmit to the stormtroopers below. Ren watched closely for any deviation from his message but the 'all units, stand down' was unambiguous. In his ear, however, he heard nothing but static.

“You're sure I should be through?” he asked, looking down at the droid. MB beeped an affirmative and Ren crossed to the window to see the front gate for himself, motioning impatiently for the First Order officers still on their knees to get up so he wouldn't have to go around them. The gate stood open and had been liberally scarred by blaster-fire from both sides, bodies of First Order and local soldiers alike fallen around it, but now the stormtroopers arrayed in front of it had lowered their weapons and the tight knot of locals arrayed to either side of the opening were cautiously doing the same.

“Finn, report,” Ren said, fiddling with the earpiece, but still getting nothing but static. “Boost the signal,” he told MB-30, who whistled back. “Finn, report,” he repeated.

“Ren-- Ren, it's Rose, I'm here,” Rose replied as the static broke up, her voice breathless but clear and familiar. To his surprise Ren felt a tiny bit of tension within him ease as he scanned the militia by the gate, looking for her. “Sorry, Finn might be in and out. He tried to send someone to check the Ghost but no one was responding so he went himself.”

“Alone?” Ren asked, frowning.

“He said he wanted to leave as many soldiers with me as possible,” Rose replied a tad defensively, and down below he saw a very Rose-shaped figure separate from the rest as the militia members straightened up, coming out of their cover.

“The First Order soldiers have been told to stand down,” Ren reported. “I need you to get your side up here so we can negotiate.”

“Are you sure?” Rose asked doubtfully, her face turning towards him where he stood at the window of the Command tower.

“The Base isn't excited about it either but it's the fastest way. You'll be allowed to keep your weapons.”

“Uh-- I'll check, let me see what they say.” She turned away for a brief moment, talking to some others near her with her earpiece out, then replaced it and looked back up at him. “They're not, um, completely sold on the idea, I don't think.”

Ren closed his eyes, trying to concentrate. The Force still felt weaker within him and his focus was being pulled away, maybe just by someone nearby contemplating murdering him but maybe by any number of things. “Will they accept hostages?” he asked. Instantly he felt disapproval emanating from over his left shoulder and turned to see that the Base Commander had taken up support position there and was managing to stare out the window next to him with a passive and yet extremely unconvinced expression.

“One sec,” Rose said.

“Our soldiers have received your order sir, and are awaiting further instruction,” the Commander next to him said at the same time.

“Then our soldiers and I have something in common,” Ren said, glancing downward again. The Force was pulling at him more insistently now. “What's your name, Commander?”

“Commander Kwa.”

“MB-30, connect Commander Kwa to Commander Tico on this frequency,” Ren ordered. “Rose, I'm handing you off to Base Commander Kwa,” he said into his earpiece just as she came back online.

“Wha--?” she begin to ask, but he'd already taken the earpiece out and was striding towards the Bases' communications array. “Patch this earpiece into the First Order patrol frequencies between here and Port Addis,” he ordered, handing it to one of the technicians there and adding, “All of them,” when the technician opened his mouth to ask. “MB-30, open these channels up,” he told the droid following him. Something was wrong. Something was wrong and that something, he was sure, he was suddenly sure without knowing when he'd realized it, was dragging his attention away towards Addis or somewhere in between.

He closed his eyes again, concentrating. Not Chewie, Chewie felt the same as before.

“It's done, sir,” the technician said, handing him the earpiece.

“Finn,” Ren said the moment he shoved it in his ear, reaching out. It was Finn, Finn was the source of the wrongness he was sure. “Finn, it's Ren, come in.” A watery sense of Finn came down the bond, but he heard no reply to accompany it. “Finn, it's Ren, are you there?” Ren repeated, pushing his senses further.

“Barely,” Finn's voice came through, sounding breathless and irritable, but unlike hearing Rose's voice Ren only felt more uneasy hearing Finn's, his fingers tightening on the edge of the comms array as the sense of wrongness crouched on the edge of his perception like a felid getting ready to pounce.

“Get out of there,” Ren ordered. “Whatever you're doing, stop and leave.”

“What? I'm in-- ruins,” Finn replied. “Why're you-- -elling at me?”

“Finn, leave!” Ren ordered sharply, turning away from the comms and looking that direction as though trying to see Finn directly. “Leave, now!”

It was too late. He knew it before he heard a mechanized voice on the other end of the line, then two, before the shout of surprise, before a couple unmistakable shots of blaster-fire. He gripped his lightsaber's hilt so tightly he could almost feel the individual beads of sweat on his skin being smeared across the metal. “Finn,” he repeated helplessly, listening, feeling the exact moment Finn's emotions spiked in alarm, in disbelief, almost in recognition-- and then, nothing. Finn went cold and gray, his mind relaxing, and Ren knew he'd lost consciousness. A silence followed, a terrible silence, both in his earpiece and in the Force, a silence where Ren grasped for him as though he could drag Finn's mind back into being and felt nothing but the grayness in reponse.

“Commander Kwa,” Ren heard himself say, pressing his earpiece farther into his ear as though that could be what it was, as though it was mere technological issues causing the dread in him now.

“Sir,” Kwa responded, crossing to him at the summons.

“A First Order unit has attacked a soldier of mine in or near the ruins of Henchbrao City. Fix this. Patch her through,” he ordered MB-30 and the technician both.

“Yes, sir,” Kwa agreed immediately. “Description of your soldier?”

“It's FN-2187,” Ren murmured, hearing himself say it as he closed his eyes, still reaching for the nothing he knew he would find on the other end. “It's the defector, FN-2187.”

To her credit Kwa once again managed to overcome this latest revelation, only freezing for a single short moment of shock and bewilderment before going to the task he'd set her, giving some short, authoritative orders that sent the comms technicians scurrying. “And Commander Tico reports she's coming up, sir,” Kwa added, nodding towards the liftbank. “With the militia leaders.”

“Yes,” Ren agreed distantly. Finn was still alive, but that was all he could tell. Rose, they'd thought it would be Rose. They'd both believed she was the one in danger, they'd both allowed that to distract them, perhaps to prejudice them as the Force sent Finn the warnings he'd received.

He watched as Kwa relayed orders, as notices were sent out, as units on patrol began to respond and the feeling of Rose neared. She'd been given five hostages, he learned, some other minor officer reporting near him as Kwa continued to work. Part of him was amazed that five had been enough.

The liftbank door opened at the same time that Kwa turned back to him, an expression on her face he couldn't decipher. “Sir,” she said.

“Commander.”

“We may have defectors, sir. Several units have deliberately not responded even though their comms appear to be operational.”

“Shut down the city,” Ren ordered immediately. “No one leaves, on foot or otherwise. Alert the fleet. Incapacitate anything in the sky that doesn't follow directives to return to the surface with all speed, First Order spacecraft included-- First Order spacecraft in particular.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Ren?” a familiar voice asked him, and he turned to see a Rebel Commander picking her way through the First Order officers, her blaster out, watching them out of the corners of her eyes just to be safe.

“Rose,” he replied, a little unsteadily.

“We're here,” she told him, gesturing towards the ragtag group of militia men standing in the doorway of HQ with five captive First Order officers in their midst, looking not a little thunderstruck to see Rose approaching him. Ren realized his blade was still out and belatedly pressed the button to sheathe it.

“I think it won't be as bad as you thought it might be,” Rose told him in an encouraging way, stopping before him.  
  
“Yes,” he agreed, sure already that compared to the distinct feeling of Finn getting farther and farther away from him none of the opinions the militia were now forming to offer the infamous Kylo Ren could ever be as bad.

“We've prepped them, a bit,” Rose confessed. “Didn't tell them who you are, exactly, just that you're a defected First Order officer starting a Resistance within the Order.”

“Rose,” Ren sighed, ignoring this somewhat outlandish characterization of his motives.

“Things on Hays Major have only been getting worse and worse, so really any change at this point--.”

“Rose,” Ren repeated, touching her shoulder to get her to look at him. She stopped mid-sentence as she finally took in his tone, the expression on his face, whatever that might be. Now that he had her eyes on him he momentarily found himself unable to continue, the words sticking in his throat. “It's Finn,” he managed. “They've taken Finn.”

Her eyes widened, her blaster falling loosely to her side. “Who? Who's taken Finn?”

“Defectors. We think. They're probably trying to get to Port Addis.”

“Is he okay? Did they hurt him?” she demanded, her jaw tightening, her blaster coming back up to be held across her body with both hands.

“He's unconscious. Rose, I don't know.”

“Find him,” she all but ordered, turning to scan the officers nearest, settling on Kwa as the obvious senior among them. “Find him!”

“We're trying,” Ren promised her.  
  
“I'll go,” Rose decided, swinging around to survey the gathered militia forces. “I'll take some others, and whatever ships you've got, whatever the fastest is.”

“Yes,” Ren agreed helplessly, gesturing for it to be done, knowing already that it would not work. The Force was strong in him again and in the quiet despair it was amplifying, telling him as surely as if it had spoken in words that Finn would prove to be beyond his reach for now, as surely as if he'd already been taken up into the vast, uncaring stars.

“Send everyone, Ren,” Rose told him, not looking back as she trotted back towards the militia.

“I will.”

“Do it now,” she ordered, a last steely glance over her shoulder, as resolute as he'd ever seen her.

“I am, Commander.” She accepted that, speaking to the militia in an abrupt, clipped tone, brushing away their protests as they gestured to Ren, to the hostages, to the room full of First Order officers in general. Ren turned to pass on the orders and saw Kwa watching him in the way Rose either hadn't or hadn't been able to, understanding in her expression even if she didn't know all of what Ren had already himself understood.

“Yes, sir,” she said before he even spoke, nodding to sundry officers around them who hurried off to do as Ren, as Rose, had ordered them to. “He may be difficult to recover immediately, sir.”

“No, Commander,” Ren said, watching Rose hurry from the room, watching what seemed to be half of the militia's numbers follow her. “Impossible, not merely difficult.” He turned away, staring towards Addis, reaching. Finn was farther away than he had been; soon he would pass out of Ren's ability to feel him in any detail altogether. That terrible surety was still ringing in him, an imperturbable tremor like a final bass note in an otherwise silent room, like an echo of defeat that just went on and on. He'd succeeded today, but it didn't feel quite the way he'd thought it would. If anything it barely felt like success at all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Mrs. Potts voice: "After all this time... he's finally learned to love."
> 
> In other news Kwa is an interesting character that I very much enjoyed creating. I wanted an unexpected response, someone who can take just about anything on the chin, and an officer Ren instantly feels is at least reliable enough for now. He can't be completely marooned, especially not with that impending disaster to contend with, that's no fun at all


	56. The path to the Dark side

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The fall begins

Rey sat in midair as the furnace hummed around her, straining in the super-heated chamber, the Kyber crystal floating between her hands. Only here could she still run the risk of opening herself to the Force completely, doing her best to hide what was happening from Leia, the fracturing within her, the spiraling of her connection as she pushed it harder and harder, drawing the Dark side out of the crystal with the irresistible call of her own pain, her own weakness. Like drawing poison to poison, she reasoned. Like bringing oil up to the surface of water so the water could run clear again.  
  
It was murder, it was hell, hurting herself, letting herself be hurt, and she was suffering for it. Whatever that weak place was within her she was prying it open, ignoring the pain and resulting panic as much as she could, sweat running down her back and sides and the creases of her knees, matting her hair to her neck and forehead, evaporating in the heat the moment it left her body and the protective cocoon of force energy she was just barely managing to keep going. Her connection to the Force was destabilizing further, faster, until in the midst of her exhaustion and indecision she almost started to believe that she would fail to heal the crystal before it succeeded in finishing her, before it got too far inside her for the damage to ever be undone. But she could tell that it was working; the crystal might be fighting but it was also relenting, slowly but surely. She could reach into it now, in the Force. It had to open to her to hurt her and in the meantime she could reach into the darkness that had become a part of it and unravel it like a tight, strangling knot, a knot that cut her repeatedly every time she tried to tease it apart.  
  
And pain wasn't the only weapon the crystal had to discourage Rey as she forged ahead with her work. The crystal's influence was no less potent now than it had been when she'd argued with Leia several days before, when she'd first lost ground to the Dark alliance working on her, pushing her, weakening whatever was good in her and drawing out whatever was bad. There were now times the crystal moved Rey's body of its own accord, raising a hand, creasing a brow, always in an effort to open or otherwise sabotage the furnace. Every so often now Rey had emerged from the struggle within it only to realize that the crystal was moving in her power in the Force, twice succeeding in dialing down the heat of the apparatus, once turning it off altogether. It frightened her, the revelation that that was possible, and the crystal preyed on that too, working within her to destabilize, to corrode, to damage whatever it could.  
  
_Ben_, she thought, over and over again, endlessly through those long hours, but even that, even that the crystal was poisoning, which was a mistake on its part. If there was one thing Rey would most resist allowing it to taint it was that, her thoughts about him, her grip on their connection, increasingly viselike, increasingly desperate as the crystal whispered to her of its own nature and where that nature had come from.  
  
Surely this wasn't the same Dark that Ben drew his power from? Surely his basic nature wasn't the same as this poisonous, insidious thing working its way into her, twisting and warping as it went?  
  
_Ben_. _Ben_. _Ben_. Always in her mind, the last thing, the very last, that she had left to hold on to in the universe as she sat in the dark, sweating, hurting, scared, pretending not to be, knowing that she could only pretend for so long. How lonely, the crystal would press upon her-- or maybe it was Rey's own thoughts at this point, she couldn't always tell anymore. How lonely she was, and had been. He was so far, so very far, and with no guarantee that he'd return. He'd said he would return but others had said that and hadn't. The universe was full of people who’d said that and hadn't. There was so much already pulling them away from each other and she'd been weak and unable to fight it, even before now, when she was so much weaker and more damaged and more exhausted. He'd seen that already. He'd seen it so clearly that night he'd come to her here that it had made him angry with her, and Ben was so rarely truly angry with her.

She tightened her grip on the crystal, having transferred it at some point from midair into her hands, though she couldn't remember exactly when. The rough edges of its irregular shape bit into the skin of her palm, and elsewhere a prickling, searing sensation bit into her too, across her shoulders especially. She was already so weak, and the crystal was still fighting, and there was no way to be absolutely sure how much healing was left to go. If there wasn't a wound in her yet surely there would be by the end of this? Even if she had any strength left, wouldn't that destroy her? And if it destroyed her, and she was still so closely linked to Ben, wouldn't that destroy him?  
  
“No,” she breathed aloud, refusing, resisting the image floating the surface of her mind, the murky thought of Ben without her, left alone, left behind. She'd thought about him leaving her, but what if she was the one who didn't come back the way they'd said they would? How much worse to go away like this, to have not just a person but a part of your mind and thoughts and feelings drained from you, forever?  
  
It was too much. She severed the connection abruptly, ripping away from the crystal like pulling flesh from flesh, a sharp, sudden, primal pain that receded almost immediately as she let out just one short, quiet cry. The sensation of damage within her remained, and when it didn't recede she had to retreat further, pulling away from the Force itself, narrowing her connection to it until the feeling eased, until there wasn't much she could feel at all anymore. It was an effort even to reach out and work the mechanism that kept the door shut, and she all but tumbled out the moment a patch of clear sand was visible, narrowly avoiding burning herself on the door’s hot metal as it swung out of the way.  
  
The sand impacted her shoulder and she bit back another cry as the coarse sensation of it against her skin confirmed that yes, she was burned, worse this time than ever before. It was like being stung all across her and she tried to get up, dizzy from the pain and the fatigue as it suddenly seemed to run her over all at once, hitting her like something solid so that she reeled, landing on her other shoulder. At the edge of the shallow bowl the furnace had been set up in she thought she saw Ammu and Ani's retreating figures, running away to hide, but that was quickly eclipsed as a shadow fell over her and Leia's voice pierced through the buzzing in her mind.  
  
“Rey! What happened?”  
  
Rey shook her head, drawing in deep breaths. She hadn't even felt Leia coming. Now, like this, she could barely feel Leia standing over her, reaching out as if to help but not knowing where to touch.  
  
“I'm fine,” Rey managed to gasp, shaking her head again, this time to clear it. “Lost focus at the end.”  
  
“Rey--.”  
  
“I'm nearly there,” Rey insisted, sitting back into a kneeling position, tilting her head to look at the underside of the crust as the wind whistled through the natural stone pipes, a breathy, high-pitched flute chorus, wandering away as the breeze took it elsewhere. It was so alien, and beautiful. The universe had so much wonder in it still to give, so much that was amazing and special that every being could share. There was life still for those who couldn't feel the Force. There was a life for her no matter what happened, even if it was smaller in some ways than the one she'd thought she would have.  
  
“Rey,” Leia said, and Rey tilted her head back to see Leia kneeling before her, looking at her hands. “Let me see it.” Rey looked down, realized she was still gripping the crystal tightly, and unclenched her fingers, letting the little red stone roll loose onto the sand. Leia scooped it up, examining it.  
  
“It looks no different than before,” she observed, in what sounded like a poor imitation of a neutral tone. “And it feels no different.”  
  
“It's different on the inside,” Rey murmured, stretching her fingers. They felt sore and stiff, after so long straining. All of her felt sore and stiff.

“And what about you?” Leia asked quietly. “Are you different on the inside?”  
  
“No.” And she wasn't-- not different, anyway, but less. Less and less and less, every day now. “I want Ben,” Rey said without meaning to, the words slipping out like she was a child as she titled her head back again, tears pricking the corners of her eyes. “I want Ben, so much. I want him here.” _I can't do this on my own_, she continued in her mind, sure that to say it out loud would break her in some way, break her further, break her more. _I don't want to do this on my own_.  
  
“Could you- do you think he would accept it, if you wanted to- to talk to him?” Leia asked, even though it sounded like she had a little difficulty suggesting it at all.  
  
“Maybe,” Rey mumbled. She still had more of a sense of him than most other things, but not enough to tell if he was busy or not. That was hard even at full strength.  
  
“Would it help you to try?”  
  
Rey considered the problem. “Maybe,” she conceded. It might help. It might make it worse. Even if he came he wouldn't be here-here, but even just a moment with him would improve things, surely. He hadn't felt the Dark energy of the Kyber crystal when she’d seen him a few days ago, so maybe at this far a remove he wouldn't feel what was happening in her either. It was worth the risk. Even just seeing his face would be worth the risk. Leia seemed to read the decision in her expression because she nodded then stood to her feet, the crystal still in her hand.  
  
“I'll take this back to camp,” she told Rey in her best no-arguments tone, tucking it into the pouch on her belt. “You need a break from it for a while. Take your time. But take some healing salve, too,” she added, looking at Rey's arms and shoulders. “You're already blistering.”  
  
Rey nodded her agreement and stood as well, the reminder of the salve spurring her onward long enough to get back to camp and then strike out again, to the left of the Falcon, a direction she hadn't explored yet. She avoided the bright splashes of sunlight as she went, neither needing or wanting any further heat on her already horribly abused skin as she slathered salve on by the gob, gasping as she applied it to her skin, her eyes streaming with pain, wetting the front of her tunic. Fortunately it was still hot enough even under the crust that the tunic would be dry again by the time she got far enough away from camp to try the bond. Leia might be willing to tolerate Rey meeting with her son a second time in her presence, under the circumstances, but it'd probably be best not to push her too far on the issue.  
  
Once she had gone far enough to be sure Leia would only be able to feel the bare outlines of her son's presence, much less Rey's own compromised state once she opened to the Force, Rey stopped in the middle of a dried fungal pad. It was dusty and disused now that the water was gone, not a moon frog in sight, but made for a slightly softer cushion as she knelt, preparing to meditate. The bond might not even work. He might be busy, or she might be too tired, or the Force might subvert it for reasons of its own. But now that she had it in mind to try- now that she had permission, even- it had started to seem like the only relief available to her in the universe.  
  
She took a deep breath, not so much opening her connection to the Force as relaxing, letting it resume within her. It hurt but not as badly as it had when she'd left the furnace, more like an ache, a constriction that felt like pressure in her chest, making her sore. She could ignore it and did, taking another deep breath and feeling for the bond.  
  
_Ben_. Please, she added in her own mind. Please, please. The bond as her center, unshakable but effected by her hurt, whatever it was, as though it had flinched itself a little somehow. The discovery rocked her with a primal terror she couldn't resist if she tried and without realizing what she was doing she converted that sudden fear to energy, to power, using its urgency to push in a way she couldn't with her own Force strength anymore. _Ben!_ she called.

The Dark Force. This was how he'd explained it, this was how it worked. She didn't care. She should, but she didn't. The Light Force hurt, and it was weak in her. To reach him she needed more than the Light Force had to give. Her fear surged in her the moment she stopped resisting, fear that she would fail, fear that she would burn, fear that he was gone from her or that she was gone from him. It spiraled in her as she tried to concentrate it, funnel it, but the fear only grew, and grew, beyond her, beyond everything, darkening the sun, drowning her in shadows.  
  
The crust screamed overhead, a fierce wind on the surface picking up in the stone pipes, as she fell backwards and the darkness came rushing towards her and she fell backwards into that, too.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Original Tumblr A/N: a friend of mine has strongly been reccomending I get a Patreon, so I have, even though I feel a little silly doing it. Fanfiction isn’t really something most people recognize as an ‘art’ but idk, I work hard on it and in Corona times we could all use something extra to keep us going anyway, right? Promise I’ll only bug you about it once <3
> 
> My Tumblr:
> 
> https://how-do-i-turn-this-thing-off.tumblr.com/
> 
> My BRAND NEW PATREON:
> 
> https://www.patreon.com/how_do_i_turn_this_thing_off

**Author's Note:**

> The one that started it all! This was written as a one-shot for Tumblr, along with all of my other Reylo one-shots, but I and the readers enjoyed it so much that it got a sequel... and a sequel... and then it just kind of evolved into a series. Tumblr readers recommended that I put it on Ao3 for ease of reading as well as to reach a wider audience, so I made an Ao3 and here we are.
> 
> I've tagged it as having Graphic Violence because the wound is so serious, not because there was too much blood and gore. Frankly I don't consider it that graphic but I know it's a sliding scale.
> 
> Link to my tumblr below, if you like-- I am slowly moving everything from over there to here, but it is on a day-to-day basis. Tumblr gets everything first, now and always :) Thank you so much for reading!!
> 
> https://how-do-i-turn-this-thing-off.tumblr.com/


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